idea Selection to Definition Query in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Hide or display records selected

MarinaFaber — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:31:58 GMT

After selecting records manually or by location it would be great to click on a button which automatically populates these records to the definition query to either hide or show them. Often this is a tedious process.

Re: Hide or display records selected

DavidKnudsen — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:01:39 GMT

I think that's the purpose served by right-clicking on the layer with selected features and choosing Selection->Make layer from selected. Of necessity, since the selected could be arbitrary (not expressed by a simple SQL query), the "memory" of the selection is based on the object ID. It would be nice, however, if there were an interface for modifying the list of OIDs once a layer based on them has been created. Currently, the definition query tab just shows an asterisked comment that the layer is based on a selection, but offers no access to the list.

Re: Hide or display records selected

ColmO_Kane — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:29:52 GMT

Very similar ideas but sometimes there are no attributes to define the selection as a definition query i.e. after manually selecting an area of interest. In this instance it should also be possible to display or hide the selection but it won't be possible to define it as a definition query. The point of this facility for me is that I could create maps just showing the slection with the necessity to create a new layer.

Re: Hide or display records selected

ChrisFox — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:07:40 GMT

@colmokane, I completely agree, i merged these ideas all together because I believe the point of all the ideas is to be able to display only the selected records. At Def Query shouldn't be required, I think this was just seen as an intermediate step to the ultimate goal of only displaying the selected records.

Re: Hide or display records selected

PeterWain — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:37:30 GMT

I'd also like to see this happen. Just logged into Ideas @ ArcGIS to log the same request!

Re: Hide or display records selected

CoryWilliams — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 02:15:29 GMT

I had one of my users request this functionality this morning. This would be extremely useful to show just a subset of information, which is relevant to the party which the map is being created for!

In recent times I've had to do this by using Excel to generate the Definition Query. But if we could do it within ArcMap, this would be fantastic!!

Selection to Definition Query

PatrickMoulden — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 17:30:27 GMT

Add a tool (w/ gui preferably) to get the attribute values for a set of selected features and use them in an interactive definition query dialog box which would allow the user to select which attributes to use for the querry and how to use them. If this is set up in gui it could also be used to visually analyse for trends within the selected data.

Re: Hide or display records selected

GarimaVyas4 — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 19:00:34 GMT

Has there been any movement on this idea?

Definition query by feature selection

JavadSalimi — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 17:56:00 GMT

I can't explain how many times I have wished to be able to take a feature selection (using "Select Features") and have it converted to a definition query.

Re: Definition query by feature selection

BruceHarold — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 20:45:04 GMT

Very old script tool:

http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=16324

Re: Definition query by feature selection

EnriqueMaglanque — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 19:29:23 GMT

It would be great if ESRI could do this.

But as I understand all the features that will be included in the Definition Query are only those objects whose attribute satisfy the query definition.
In contrast, using "Select Features or Elements" select features by eye-balling them (or based on their location on the computer screen), and without any regard and not in any way based on a common tabular attribute.
What I do is select the desired features, and define a common attribute in the layer's table.

Re: Definition query by feature selection

DanielMakridakis — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 18:09:35 GMT

A definition query is adaptive to the data so if any new data is added or removed that stratify the query the displayed features would adjust accordingly. To create a selection into a query would mean your definition query would be a list of the selected Object IDs.

If you want to create a layer from your current selection just right click on the layer in the TOC and choose Selection> Create layer from selected features.

This brings up a different idea that I will now post, which is, I wish you could add, merge, and remove records from layers that were created from “Create layer from selected features”. Often I create a layer from selection, do a few things, realize its missing some data, and either have to re-do the whole selection including these missing features or make a new layer and then do some kind of select by location to select all from the parent layer that’s in the 2 subsets. Or I created a layer from selection and realize there are a few features i wish werent in there and have to re-do the whole thing to remove them. If it was a complicated selection this can be time consuming and produce further user errors during the replication.

Re: Hide or display records selected

GISAnalyst3 — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 20:43:26 GMT

I can't believe this wasn't done a long time ago. In the attribute table it's easy to show only selected features, so why would anyone think that this isn't something you would optionally want the map to reflect? There are many instances where a selection query won't do the job.

Another useful variation would be the ability to optionally have the attribute table list only the features currently visible on the map.

Re: Definition query by feature selection

JHayes — Wed, 21 May 2014 22:23:57 GMT

I'm right there with you. Life would be so much easier sometime if we had this option! We need this option!

Re: Selection to Definition Query

JakubSisak — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 14:10:58 GMT

I made an Addin for that: Make Query from Selection

Feature Select Definition

DebiMartin — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 16:54:54 GMT

I would like to make a selection from a dataset to be symbolize, non selected would not available and or create a definition query from a selection set.

Re: Hide or display records selected

MattWilkie3 — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 20:37:55 GMT

@chris_fox-esristaff the first part of the idea is display only the selected records, but the second part is the ability to later inspect that selection and possibly alter it, as well save and share it. Copying the selection into a definition query would allow that, while creating a layer from selection does not.

Also in my experience the redraw performance of def-query layers is markedly faster than selection-set layers, especially for image services.

Re: Selection to Definition Query

CécileDELIMAL_-_PAPILLON — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 14:52:50 GMT

Hi Jakub,

How can we get your addin ?

Thanks!

Re: Selection to Definition Query

MichaelVolz — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 15:26:08 GMT

Jakub:

Is this an ArcMap Addin?

If so, do you have plans to make this for Pro as well?

Re: Hide or display records selected

MattWilkie3 — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 19:15:09 GMT

A further limitation of Selections that Def Queries don't have is that many operations ignore the features/rows in "Selection from layer xxxxx" and read straight from the source table anyway.