topic Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology in ArcMap Questions

Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

JonathanBarnsley — Mon, 09 May 2022 22:49:53 GMT

Hi there,

I am having some issues with symbology for a polygon layer where the fill pattern has striped irregularities (see image). Recreating the layer has no impact, and it seems to be specific to the standard three dot fill pattern. I have cleared the feature cache. The only thing I have found that helps is if I pull the layer into another blank MXD. Besides recreating a new MDX, which I am trying to avoid, I am not sure what options I have.

Are there any thoughts on what might be causing this?

Thanks a bunch!

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RhettZufelt — Mon, 09 May 2022 23:13:48 GMT

Sometimes I see this with something wrong with the data. Could try check geometry tool and repair if reports issues. I've seen that fix it sometimes.

Though, when zooming in, ArcMap seems to do stuff like that a lot with picture fill in the symbol.

If I edit the symbol and create something similar with marker fill(s), I normally don't run into this kind of issue.

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

JonathanBarnsley — Tue, 10 May 2022 20:31:28 GMT

Hi Rhett,

Thanks for getting back to me! Tried check/repair geometry but it didn't seem to fix it.

I did try to recreate the MXD using the same template and without a template and found that the issue again in both cases. However, I did notice at some specific scales or with specific dimensions of the map box in design view the striping changed or entirely went away.

Presumably this is an issue with the repeat distance of the pattern fill having some issue at a given draw distance/dimension. A bit annoying and probably no easy fix for a user besides scaling/rearranging until it draws correctly?

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RhettZufelt — Tue, 10 May 2022 21:12:13 GMT

Jonathan,

It looks like you are using the Historic Site fill symbol? If so, and you edit the symbol, you will see it is a picture fill symbol.

I have not had much luck using picture fill symbols if I have to zoom in very far. At some zoom level, the points will start stretching out into lines until they finally just stop drawing.

I normally edit the symbol, switch to marker symbol and play with the layers/offsets/etc. until I get the dot density/pattern that I want. Then, they will zoom in/out as expected (if there are no geometry issues).

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

JonathanBarnsley — Tue, 10 May 2022 21:18:22 GMT

Hi Rhett,

Yep, it's based off the Historic Site picture fill. Ah! That may well be the issue.

I will give it a go recreating the same pattern (as it is used as a standard symbology) with a marker symbol and see how it goes.

Thanks for your help!

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RobertBorchert — Wed, 11 May 2022 12:26:53 GMT

describe your hardware.

Meaning what are you using for a processor, ram, gpu, etc

have your tried a different fill pattern and a different color.

A good practice is to only use web safe colors for display purposes. But I suspect it could be hardware related.

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RhettZufelt — Wed, 11 May 2022 14:42:36 GMT

Intel Core i9-10900X, 32Gb, Quadra P2200

Intel Xeon Gold 6146, 32Gb, virtual box with Hyper-V video

Intel Core 97-7700K, 32Gb, Radeon Pro WX 5100

are the three I tested with recently.

You can add every version of ArcMap from 8 to 10.6.1 as these are the only I have tested/seen the issue with.

Suspect when we get to 10.8.1 this summer, will be the same.

Tried every picture fill in the ESRI palette. A few of them don't go away when really zoomed in, but can't find a picture fill that does not start "mis-behaving" when zooming in close. They all seem to at least start "streaking" or putting while lines in there or something, though some are better than others.

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RobertBorchert — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:08:55 GMT

Oops my apologies I didn't see the part where it was a picture fill.

Maybe try creating your own picture to use as the fill and save it as a transparent .png before brining it in.

Have you tried changing the background to a different color?

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RobertBorchert — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:13:22 GMT

As far as creating a new .mxd

I found issues almost every time I upgraded ArcMAP

A simple way to recreate the .mxd in a newer format, and also more effective than saving as a new version.

Open your .mxd and start a new blank session

make sure all features and groups are visible in the data frame(s)

Open the layouts for both .mxd's

From the old .mxd select all elements in the layout.

Copy and paste into the new layout.

The only cleanup I have typically had when doing this is adjusting the layout elements.

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RhettZufelt — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:28:43 GMT

Yep, tried different colors. have not tried to create a new transparent.png to test.

I just chalk this up to one of the "known limitations" of ArcMap, and change from picture fill in the rare occasions I need to zoom in that far.

Highly agree on starting with new ArcMap session. Even if same version, and want a map with same data, select them, copy/paste to new mxd is way "safer" than Save As option.

As a test, I just copied/pasted all the layers from my working mxd that is 14.5 Mb, saved the new mxd and is 4.6 Mb.

Same data, just shows how much "legacy" info gets kept inside of an mxd (has caused a lot of locking issues in the past as well as it can keep locks to data that is no longer in the mxd.)

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RobertBorchert — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:40:22 GMT

Cannot be much help in this. I never use picture fill.

If you can find that symbol somewhere in the ESRI fonts I would suggest trying to use that as the fill.

Now finding that symbol sounds intimidating. And it is. There are LOTS of fonts. (75)

What I did many years ago, and it took a little while to set up.

I created an Excel spreadsheet

Column A I made Ariel and populated the values with 33 through 255

Column B is also Ariel but I populated it with =CHAR(A2) and dragged it all the way down to 255. then to make it more streamlined I copied and pasted that new data into Notepad then copy and past it back to each cell was =char(number from column A)

For example cell B2 appears as !

Then I dragged all the cells from column B all the way to column BW

The the arduous part was changing the font in each column to the ESRI font. I have that many because I also have NISC fonts

I then printed it out on 11 x 17 paper and keep it in my cabinet. I have used this countless times to find a symbol I wanted

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RobertBorchert — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:41:23 GMT

Oh and I populated row 1 with the name of the font. that was fun

Re: Striped issue with fill pattern polygon symbology

RobertBorchert — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:43:01 GMT