I would like to connect with someone who is a transportation (highways/etc.) cartographer. I need to access some how to's to create shields for highways and roads.

[RichardLawrence1]

I have begun a cartography project and am in need of adding and labeling major highways, state highways, state and county roads and USFS roads with various styles of shields placed at a few regular distances on my layouts. I am using ArcPro 2.1 and have a pretty good command of basic layout and carto skills therein...up to now. I am looking for any resources someone could point me toward to help me discover how to accomplish this in ArcPro.  Thanks!

Richard

rlawrence@azgfd.gov

[SamuelColdiron]

I don't have any resources on hand to point you too, but I can give you an idea of how we handle shields Oklahoma DOT.

   For consistency sake we developed a point feature class that contains our shield information that was they appear in the same place for every map and we know they will be out of the way of other information that usually appears on our maps. The only attribute information you really need is the Route Number, the Route Type (Interstate, US, State, other, ect.), and a Viewing Level. We did this to manually adjust how many shields and their placement appear for maps if we make them at the County, Maintenance Division, or State Wide view. This method takes some time to set up originally, but gives you a great dataset that will be consistent every time.We then label the points using Label Classes based on the Route Type. In each class we use the Route Number as the Label Text and the appropriate Shield as Marker Symbol behind the text. We center the label on the point and change the point symbology to a 1 size with a white fill. We use no fill in ArcMap, but if you set a point to no fill color in Pro it won't let you select the point anymore which has caused us problems. 

   There is a more automated way which will not be as tedious as creating a big point feature class, but you will have to fight the label engine on your shield placement, especially if you have to change surrounding data or layout options later. Your road network will need to have the same attribute information in it, minus the Viewing Level, to get the labels to work. You will create the labels the same way, placing the text and the shield behind it, but you will use the Shield Label Placement that Pro provides for labeling Polylines. You will also have to use the Repeat option under Conflict Resolution to set your shield interval and use the Line Connection option, also under Conflict Resolution, so your shield look seamless along a road and don't double up at line breaks. A major tool to help with label clutter when using this method is Feature Weights. This is located under Labeling > More Dropdown > Weights. This allows you to set which feature should get overlapped by labels and which can but as minimally as possible. Just know that the more variance you put in the weights the longer it will take to draw as it has to calculate the best placement.

   Sorry for the novel, but I hope this helps get you started. If you have more questions about what I wrote, I will check back here every so often or feel free to email me at scoldiron@odot.org.

[RichardLawrence1]

Samuel -

This is just what I need, and I appreciate your level of detail...a lot of novels are great, right? Much appreciated. I might have a followup question or two, but for now I am up and running again. Thank you for the ideas.

Richard

[Anonymous User]

Sam,

With regard to this:

"We use no fill in ArcMap, but if you set a point to no fill color in Pro it won't let you select the point anymore which has caused us problems. "

One trick to create a label for a feature in pro without seeing the feature is to set it's transparency to 99%. This will make the feature invisible but the label will show and you will be able to select or identify the point to get at it's attributes.

Hope this helps.

[AdrianWelsh]

Richard,

Many of the shields can be found in various locations that are already created. Take a look at this site that has nearly all highway shields for each state:

GitHub - VerdantSkys/DDVs_ALL 

[RichardLawrence1]

Adrian -

Your response was highly useful and greatly appreciated. I can always go back into ArcGIS Desktop and put this solution to use. However, we are moving forward into ArcPro and the project with which I am working is using that platform, will involve close to 50 subsections of the state, each requiring this solution and so it won't be easy for me to implement this specific solution. However, I can also reach out to other respondees to see if something like this has already been ported to Pro.  Again, many thanks for the helpful response.

Richard Lawrence

[RichardLawrence1]

Chris -

Thanks for the response. This is very useful and I appreciate you help.

RICHARD LAWRENCE | GIS PROGRAM SPVR

ARIZONA GAME AND FISH DEPARTMENT

[KyleGonterwitz]

For Kansas DOT, we created a dynamic shield layer which uses maplex labeling to dynamically place shields and label all numbered routes.  Its very handy for quick maps and webmaps and saves countless hours of time.

Here is a link to the web service.  

here is an image of a slide from a slide deck where I talked about this shield layer a couple of years ago.  We use different shields for 2 character and 3 character numbered highways, for example US route 400 has a wider shield than US 50.  For routes with multiple number designations within a I/U/K categorization, the numbered route labels are stacked and a taller shield is used.  For routes with combined I/U/K designations, all the shields and numbers are displayed.  

[RichardLawrence1]

Thanks, Kyle! This is a nice solution that you have implemented. I may need to look at implementing this or something like it. We are beginning to work exclusively in ArcGIS Pro, and this particular project involves a map series of 50-100 maps within AZ. So, moving back and forth between ArcMap and Pro won't be an option. I'll investigate more how I can do with within Pro.

Thanks for the ideas!

Richard

[KyleGonterwitz]

We've been using pro a lot more lately too.  This solution works nicely with pro because it's easy to import the service and use it as a web service layer in pro.  Eventually with pro we will publish something like this natively from pro through portal and enterprise, and also make use of vector tiles with scale level symbols for our transportation layers.