topic Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation in Cartography and Maps Questions

Not enough labels in contour annotation

BrianWilson — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 03:09:53 GMT

Is there any way to tell the contour annotation tool to generate more / denser labels?

The "ladder" option seems to do nothing discernible.

When I use the tool to create contour annotation, the labels are very sparse. I'd rather have it generate 10x too many and delete the extras than have a page of contours with 1 or 2 labels.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

DanPatterson_Retired — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 07:55:16 GMT

If you follow the associated threads at the bottom of the help file it leads to

repeating-labels-along-lines which suggests that you can increase the density there, but it is in the Maplex section

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

BrianWilson — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 20:57:28 GMT

This sounds like you are saying "use ArcMap+Maplex not the Contour Annotation tool". I know all about label density and maplex labels; thanks for the reference all the same; that's what I have been doing until now. I want masks though -- I don't want lines running through the labels.

Outside of using the unloved broken tool, my understanding is that if want to mask the labels I must convert them to annotation. When I do that it drops 99% of the labels. So it is useless so far as well.

The lines through the numbers still beat ink on mylar.

I have messed around with all the options including putting labels into an annotation group in the map. Feature linked, in a database, convert unplaced... tried even "Selected features" after selecting all contours. Nothing.

Labels work, conversion to annotation fails. It comes down to either "it's broken" or "I am missing something". I've know I've done labels to annotation in the past with good results so I am just missing something. Usually I use it to fix up street names.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 01:40:10 GMT

Brian.. What is wrong with what is shown? Or is that what you want? Looks good to me, but I rarely make maps .

None of the cartographically inclined have leapt in for support, so unfortunately I will have to leave you with my reference link and hope others will chime in.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

JayantaPoddar — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 01:56:02 GMT

Brian,

You should try How To: Create labels on contour lines using Mask and Halo.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 02:08:15 GMT

Or in the Maplex engine placing-labels-for-contours but I thought you were more interested in the label density?

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

BrianWilson — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 21:13:45 GMT

This is the "before" picture showing the great job Maplex does. When I click "Convert" then it will create a new annotation file that contains just a few labels. I can't figure out why it does not convert ALL the labels.

In Maplex labeling I can control the density of the labels in a reasonable way - I can intentionally make too many in Maplex and then after converting to Annotation I would by choice thin them out, removing the ones that are in the wrong place, shifting around the others etc.

But that is not working since they mostly vanish when I run "Convert to annotation". I would have sent a second screen shot showing this but it would have just shown the above picture without the labels.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

BrianWilson — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 21:20:11 GMT

Thanks for the suggestion but the problem is labels are not appearing when converted to annotation.

In the example they show contours on a white background which would work but I typically put my contour onto an aerial photo. I think halos look bad when rendered over a photo. Creating a polygon mask and then using the mask to erase from the contour is best (in Arcmap anyway).

But I know how to do all that. It's the missing labels that's the problem. It's probably karma, I probably did something in a previous life in a galaxy far far away and now contour labels are the means of retribution.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

BrianWilson — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 21:27:26 GMT

Oh! Look! an example in still written BASIC! and yes -- density is the issue so though interesting that page is not helpful.

In this project I created a separate feature class for the major contour intervals using modulo.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

JakubSisak — Tue, 01 May 2018 21:24:11 GMT

I think this is a bug. I am running 10.6 and have the same problem. Maplex is placing labels great but when I export them to annotations, most are missing and the Maplex placements are not honoured also. Laddering for contours which works great dynamically does not export at all into static annotations. Seems like exporting is messed up.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

JakubSisak — Wed, 02 May 2018 14:32:08 GMT

I now believe that it is specifically the contour placement method that's the culprit. It labels fine dynamically but when exporting to static annotations it drops (in my case) 73% (a VAST majority) of the labels. Also, the problem seems to get worse with the number of contours; the more contours I need to label the less exported static annotations I get. When the dataset contains up to 15000 contours and the Countour method is selected, the export will still drop labels but not as many. When labelling 50000 contours only a fraction of the labels convert and so on... Workaround: Changing the method from Contour placement to Regular placement method retains ALL the labels in the same positions but you loose the nice laddering options.

In case anyone wonders why i need to label so many contours; we're building a high quality topographic basemap for a web GIS system across a vast geographical area and at 14 different scale levels down to 1:1500. At each scale level the interval of the contours changes and each scale level is more and more details as we zoom down. I need static annotations because we are masking the lines bellow the labels. Once finish we export these projects into a tile package to be used as basemap services on the server.

Re: Not enough labels in contour annotation

JakubSisak — Wed, 02 May 2018 14:36:20 GMT

Maplex works fine and places everything perfectly. The problem is when labels are exported to static annotations. - most labels area dropped when the Contour Placement method is used.