ArcPro Symbology Pane Improvements: Better Color Sampler, Toggleable Legend Items, Improved Symbol Layer Drawing, Copy-Paste Symbologies

[lzk222]

The symbology pane is poorly designed in ArcPro. The ESRI development team should look to imitate QGIS symbology UI and functionality.

1) Color sampler. The ESRI color sampler is extremely limited, it only works on map features. QGIS allows for color sampling anywhere on the screen (layer pane, images open on desktop, even web browsers).

2) Toggleable legend items. This is the default setting in QGIS and it’s wonderful. As far as I can tell it’s not possible to do this in ArcPro and certainly not AGOL.

3) Hierarchies. Unique value hierarchies often do not work as expected in ArcPro and the symbol layer drawing is very buggy. Not sure what to say other than this just needs to be reworked.

4) Copy-Paste (using hotkeys!) symbologies from one layer to another. Right now ESRI has designed a very tedious and inefficient system for “importing” layer symbologies from one layer to another. In QGIS it’s as simple as Ctr+Alt+S (copy symbology) Ctrl+Alt+V (paste symbology).

5) Also, why is there no delete option for added values? It seems like only way to do this is to "remove all".

 

QGIS, for comparison.

These are only a handful of suggestions. Overall, I would suggest the ESRI ArcPro development team take a look at QGIS symbologies and see what enhancements can be made.

[AmeliaBradshaw]

Hello @lzk222 , 

Thank you for submitting an Idea to Esri Community! I see your Idea has several separate requests. According to our ArcGIS Ideas Submission Guidelines and Statuses , Idea submissions should represent a single Idea, instead of multiple Ideas in a list. I need to check, but I think a few of these requests have been requested by users in the past. If this is the case, I'll refer you to those Ideas so you can give kudos to them. It is best to keep Ideas unique and vote for those you want to see implemented. This helps with our tracking and assessment of Ideas. 

Please let me know if you have further questions. 

Amelia 

[wayfaringrob]

These are great ideas, though, please do link the individual ideas when you post them!

[lzk222]

I've done the work. How about your team take some of these ideas and improve your product for a change.

[ErikBreedon]

@lzk222 #3 and #5 are possible, but perhaps not the way you expected. I've never used QGIS.

Hierarchies are called symbol layer drawing. https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/mapping/layer-properties/symbol-layer-drawing.htm

Deleting added values is possible by right-clicking and deleting values.

I hope this helps.

[AlfredBaldenweck]

Number 2 has an idea here as well, leaving just #1 and #4 to be addressed: Toggle visibility for individual Categories on Sym... - Esri Community

[ValeriaChavez]

Hi @lzk222!

As noted by @ErikBreedon, points #3 and #5 are possible by managing Symbol layer drawing.  

As noted by @AlfredBaldenweck, point #2 has an existing Idea on Esri Community you can kudo here: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/toggle-visibility-for-individual-categories-on/idi-p/... 

Point #1 also has an existing Idea you can kudo here: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/implement-the-eyedropper-everywhere/idi-p/1130115 

Point #4 was an Idea implemented with the ArcGIS Pro 3.4 release: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/copy-paste-layer-properties-choose-individual/idi-p/1.... You can learn more about it in this page of the documentation. 

As @AmeliaBradshaw noted, Idea submissions should always represent a single Idea, not multiple Ideas in a list. Please make sure your submissions align with the ArcGIS Ideas Submission Guidelines and Statuses.