Preventing symbols from different layers from interfering with each other in AGOL

Question

I am tackling a project that contains several new elements for me since I am a high school social studies teacher and not a full-time GIS professional.

For this particular project I am trying to show the various US interventions during the Cold War around the world. I have created individual points for each intervention. These points are in a shapefile that contains a list of 49 different interventions. The fields include the country of the intervention, the year, a short description and whether or not a certain type of action occurred.

Example: Guatemala, 1954, (description) and the following values for the six types of action possible: Command=1, Troops=0, Bombing=1, Naval=0, Nuke=1, Jets=0. What this means is that in 1954 we used Command Operations, Bombing and Nuclear Threats to intervene in Guatemalan affairs. On this particular point then I would like to see the three distinct symbols for those types of action. Currently I can achieve this by creating 6 layers but the symbols are all stacked on top of each other.

Here is the link to my first attempt at a map service: http://bit.ly/10EHUAU

This has all been done in Desktop 10.1 Advanced. I plan to create a feature service on our AGOL account once I have solved this problem.

Thanks for any advice.

SteveCline · Answer

Hi Steve,
What I have done in the past with a situation like that was the following:
- create a graphic box that has the six items displayed as symbols, as part of that graphic (think of a small table with two columns and three rows, having 6 boxes each representing one of your six features)
- once you have this basic graphic, create copies of it for all combinations, highighting the options in the 6 boxes that have a number rather than a zero
- create a column in your attribute table that brings the 6 categories together (ie 100110)
- symbolize this new column with your newly created graphics

this would show every point with the same base graphic, but highlighting the options / features that apply.

Let me know if this makes sense, or I can see if I can dig up a visual example.

RJ

I will give this a try and let you know if I need an example.  I think I know what you mean.  Thanks.

RobertWeise · Answer

Hi Steve,
What I have done in the past with a situation like that was the following:
- create a graphic box that has the six items displayed as symbols, as part of that graphic (think of a small table with two columns and three rows, having 6 boxes each representing one of your six features)
- once you have this basic graphic, create copies of it for all combinations, highighting the options in the 6 boxes that have a number rather than a zero
- create a column in your attribute table that brings the 6 categories together (ie 100110)
- symbolize this new column with your newly created graphics