Creating multiple symbols for data from the same table

[JoeD]

Hi,

I'm trying to create a map of towns, towns with airports, and towns with hospitals for an area (it's a school project).  I am given a .dbf file with all of the towns I need to display, but I am only given a list of the towns with airports and hospitals.

Basically, I have selected all of the towns with airports and hospitals and created a new layer from their data.  I then changed the symbols from a house to a airplane or cross depending on what they represent.  The problem is, the outline of the house shows up behind the cross and airplane symbols.  Is there anyway to stop the original symbols for the new data from showing up behind the other symbols?

Thanks in advance for any help, it is appreciated.

Joe

[RobertBorchert]

turn off or remove the layer with the house symbol on it.

[AngelynSnyder]

jdavid05,

I recommend exactly what rborchert suggested. If you are only working with 1 layer you can do one of two things. You can either select by attribute all the features that are a hospital and export them to a new layer, then do the same thing with the airports, creating two new layers, which will allow you to turn off the original layer without turning off your hospitals or airports.

Or, if you have an attribute in your table that tells you what the location is, "hospital, airport, other", then you can use the category symbology and add only the hospital and airport attributes, then uncheck the all other features option to display just those the data you want on your map.

[ColinLang]

There is a much simpler way - edit your symbols so that there is an offset and always place the hospital symbol one direction from the city, and the airport symbol a different direction from the city, i.e 45 and 135 degrees.

[AngelynSnyder]

chlang's solution is a good one. When I read your post, I thought you were asking for how to remove the house symbol all together and not the hospitals and airports. If you still want the house symbols to show, then follow chlang's instructions.

There are also help guides to walk you through any of the above suggestions.

[JoeD]

Thanks guys,

I did create 3 layers from the single layer - it took a while, but it worked. I just used a marker and an offset symbol to display if there was other features (I didn't do the house idea, it was too confusing to read with two other symbols in some places).  I did not know of the offset feature, but it is very helpful when a data point is contained in multiple databases.

Anyways, thank you for the help, I know it was kind of a newbie question but I think I should get a good grade.

Cheers,
Joe