symbol name as field value

Question

I have been working on a symbolisation based on the values in different fields. Now I should like to define a new field based on the symbols I use in the symbolisation. Is this possible ??
I am using arcgis 10. 
It's okay if I have a different number for each symbol.

thanks in advance for your suggestions.

AlexeyTereshenkov · Answer

Bart,

Got it. Hm, I thought a bit but have nothing to suggest except doing some manual work. You could use the Select by Attribute in ArcMap to select interactively features that meet a certain condition (those you used to create different categories for the symbology) and then use the Field Calculator to calculate a certain value in a newly added field.
I hope there are not so many symbol categories so you could do that in timely manner 🙂 let's wait though - maybe someone else has brighter ideas 🙂

BartDe_Bruyn · Answer

Hi, Do you mean that you want to combine values from multiple fields into one value in one field? Say you have field A and field B. A B 45 66 56 77 67 88 Do you want to create a new field C which would have something like this: A B C 45 66 "45/66" 56 77 "56/77" 67 88 "67/88" ? Or you mean that you have used various symbols for various features (I guess based on some attribute) and now you want to calculate a new field which would have values based on the symbol used for this feature (green circle will be "123" and black square will be "456")? In this case, you do not have to bother with symbols at all since the symbology in ArcMap is always attribute-driven. This is because you have to differentiate features based on their properties (it could either non-spatial attributes (properties) or geometrical properties like area, length, etc.) Your last calculation is the one I want to do. I want to give values based on the symbol used for each feature. But it is rather difficult to gather all the value combinations for each symbol symbol1: A=45 B=b, A=45 B=c, A=45 B=e, A=66 B=f symbol2: A=36 B=, A=36 B=k, ........ I know that my method was very bad, but my map image is correct now.... Is it possible to calculate automatically a new field C with: feature 1: symbol 1, C=123 feature 2: symbol 2, C=456 feature 3: symbol 1, C=123 and so on ... Is this possible in ArcGIS? In ArcInfo workstion It is possible, something like: arcedit: calculate $symbol But here I have no workstation commands..

AlexeyTereshenkov · Answer

Hi,

Do you mean that you want to combine values from multiple fields into one value in one field? Say you have field A and field B.

A    B
45  66
56  77
67  88

Do you want to create a new field C which would have something like this:

A    B   C
45  66  "45/66"
56  77  "56/77"
67  88  "67/88"

?

Or you mean that you have used various symbols for various features (I guess based on some attribute) and now you want to calculate a new field which would have values based on the symbol used for this feature (green circle will be "123" and black square will be "456")? In this case, you do not have to bother with symbols at all since the symbology in ArcMap is always attribute-driven. This is because you have to differentiate features based on their properties (it could either non-spatial attributes (properties) or geometrical properties like area, length, etc.)