Marker Layer (text) between dashes in line symbology?

Question

I am trying to create symbology for a polyline, where there are letters between the dashes when a polyline is symbolized as a dash.

I have a marker layer created within the symbology tab of the line, which is symbolized with dashes. The marker layer contains ABC, which I want to have appear between the dashes. Below is what the symbolization tab looks like:

However, the below image is what the layer ends up looking like:

As you can see in the image, the dashes continue behind the lettering, which is not what I want. Below is an image of what I am trying to achieve, and would appreciate any and all help.

Thank you

- Cole

GoviPaulHines · Answer

I would love to know if there is an internal document that details how the settings for these markers and line templates actually work. For example, it would be nice to know how the Marker Placement settings work with the placement templates versus offsets.

After much trial and error, trying to recreate line styles generated in AutoCAD for our permitting people, I've found that the example above can be recreated using a slightly simpler approach.

* Keeping the line dash template at '30 24'
* Setting 'At line ends' to 'Half pattern' (This turns off the offset along line, keeping it at '0')
* For the shape marker layer, setting Placement Template to 54 (the total of the dash template)
* Setting Endings to 'Custom'
* Setting the Offset (in the Marker Placement group, not the Offset Distance group) to half the total (in this case to 27)

I don't completely understand why this works every time, but it does.

Jesse Wickizer · Answer

Give your marker symbol the same dash pattern as the line, with a relatively long dash compared to gap size. Then make the Placement template of the marker symbol equal to the dash length + half the gap length.

Finally, offset the stroke dash a distance that puts the shape marker inside the gap. Sometimes at the line endings there's some overlap like the M in the upper-left part of the example map below, but it seems to work pretty well.

ckellow · Answer

This solution was a good idea for lines where you can have the HALO around the text. However, if you want to be able to the items underneath the text, then this will not work. This was my case as I cared about the overlapping features that the text would be overlayed on top of.

One solution I never got around to doing because it was more manual would have been to manually place an annotation layer with the lettering in gaps of a line after setting the line to have a dashed type with a blank space. Similar to: --------------       ----------------. The gap would be filled with the annotation/label that would be placed there.