topic Re: Shading/hatching a polygon in ArcMap Questions

Shading/hatching a polygon

StephenPsallidas — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 15:00:48 GMT

Hi all, I'm a relatively inexperienced user of ArcMap 10.8.2.

I have created a layer with various polygons drawn on it, and assigned values to different polygons, so the polygons' boundary lines will show in different colours. (See attached)

How do I make these polygons have a 'shading' or 'hatching' inside them, instead of a simple boundary line with no fill? I've looked at all the 'symbols' available, but they only change the boundary lines, there is nothing that provides a 'fill' that I can see?

Thanks for any help!

Re: Shading/hatching a polygon

JeffHouser — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 16:02:11 GMT

Hello Stephen,

In the Table of Contents, go to the properties of the given layer, and change symbology from "features - Single Symbol" to "Categories". In "Categories", you can change the outline and fill properties. I hope that helps

~ Jeff

Re: Shading/hatching a polygon

RhettZufelt — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 16:07:22 GMT

Is this for sure a polygon dataset? In the image, it almost looks like lines in which case, symbology would not show a fill option.

Re: Shading/hatching a polygon

StephenPsallidas — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 12:02:00 GMT

Thanks for your reply. I created the boundaries as Lines, but then joined the start and end points. I assumed that these would then be Polygons, but it seems not! I've done a little trial and can see that I should have created a Polygon shapefile, that seems to work for having shading and hatching styles available.... I'm now going to have to retrace all my shapes as polygons, unless you know of a way of 'converting' line shapes (or line layers) to Polygon?? Thanks again, Steve

Re: Shading/hatching a polygon

JimCousins — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 13:22:32 GMT

I assume you have a basic level and not a standard or advanced ArcMap license, as they have tools to do this. A basic level license does not have access to those tools. There is a third party tool called "ETGeowizards" that will do this in their free version. It is a very useful tool, providing access to functionality that is unavailable within ArcMap with a basic level license.

- Jim