Labels Overlapping

Question

I have been having a problem with topography labels overlapping other polygons.  One project I am working on, I need to display Hydric Soils with no topo labels overlapping.  When I open the label weight ranking, I set the Hydric Soil feature weight to high and nothing seems to happen.  Labels still overlap the hydic soils.  In the past I have gotten around this by running an erase of the topo layer, essentially deleting the data inside the hydric soil layer.  I am getting tired of doing this every time and was wondering if anyone knew of a way to get this working properly

DarrenWiens2 · Answer

Chris, you stopped reading the help page you linked to too early.

"If you install and enable the Maplex for ArcGIS extension, weights work differently. With Maplex labeling, there are no label weights and there are separate settings for polygon feature weights and polygon boundary feature weights."

In other words, turn on Maplex labeling, and set interior feature weight to 1000.

ChrisDonohue__GISP · Answer

I've run into the same issue and am also curious if there is a way to resolve this besides Erase.

It appears the main issue is that their is no way to have the label engine recognize that no labels should be placed in a polygon.   Instead, they will be prevented from being placed on the outline (only):

"Setting a feature weight of high for point or line features ensures that no labels will be placed on top of these features. Setting a feature weight of high for polygon features ensures that no labels will be placed on the outline of these features."

Source:  ArcGIS Desktop

Is there some way to make a polygon a sort of exclusion-zone for labels?

Chris Donohue, GISP