How can I show fewer contour lines?

[RickCheney]

The shape file with Contour Lines in the image below has a lot of data.  I tried making the contour lines below very thin but the lines are so tight they are obscuring the terrain below.   I there a way I can show fewer contour lines? 

[XanderBakker · Accepted solution]

As explained in this thread: https://community.esri.com/thread/103594 there are several ways to do this. If my contour lines are for instance every meter:

... and I want to show the contours every 10 meter, like this:

I can go into the layer properties and specify a definition query like:

mod( CNiAltura , 10) = 0

In this case "CNiAltura" is the field that contains the height of each contour line.

Change the field name and the value 10 to your specific needs.

[SarahBaughman]

This just saved me so much time messing around with tools, so thank you!!!

[JoshuaBixby]

Check out Displaying a subset of features in a layer.

With contour lines, typically the elevation of the contour will be included as an attribute of the contour line.  If I am working with 2 foot contour lines and only want to display 10 foot lines, a definition query like MOD(elevation, 10) = 0 would do the job.  If the dataset is very large, having an index on the elevation value field might help the performance of the definition query.

[RickCheney]

Thank you Xander and Joshua, I used your solutions and it worked perfectly.  I really appreciate your advice.

[SteveLynch]

or you could use the ContourList tool and create a selected set of contours. For example, you might want contours every 50 for values less than 200 and then every 100 thereafter.

ContourList("elevation", "C:/sapyexamples/output/outcontourlist.shp", [0, 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600])

[MichaelVolz]

Do you need a Spatial Analyst extension to use the ContourList tool?

[XanderBakker]

It is part of Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst

[RickCheney]

Thank you, I didn't even know the ContourList tool existed.  I will check the tool and learn about it.