Select to view content in your preferred language

Rotate polygon fills in Legend to match Data Frame rotation

5997
21
08-13-2013 03:29 PM
Status: Open
Labels (1)
WayneRennick
Occasional Contributor

If you have a data frame that is rotated, the symbols in the legend for polygons with line and pattern fills don't rotate in the Legend. The solution ESRI suggests is to convert the legend to graphics and individually convert each polygon symbol. Thanks for the time saving suggestion ESRI.

0EME0000000TgCH

21 Comments
JurajKrumpolec
That's right, legend symbol should follow map rotation. Finally the same idea is under consideration: Fix Hatching Labels within a Rotated Data Frame. Seems like someday ArcGIS Desktop will be pleasure to work with... and maybe we live long enough to see it ;)
GerryReidel
I'd settle for the hatch on the map staying rotated the way it appears in the legend.
michaelcollins1
I think people have been asking for this for 10 years...
DonMitchell
If you ask me, this should be considered a bug and fixed. Honestly, if you follow basic cartographic principles, when creating a line fill you don't rotate the fill to match the rotation of a map. The hatching should stay consistent for the criteria it is representing. A bug like this can create havoc on a map with different hatching angles. Suppose you have four categories you are symbolizing with line hatching differing angles of 0°, 45°, 90°, and 135° for each category. If the data-frame is rotated 45°, it results in a very misleading map. I think I have another work-around that might be better. Stop using ArcGIS and switch to something that works better for creating maps.
NicolasGIS

I am under the impression that it is still the case with ArcGIS Pro 2.5.0 !

MichaelAugust

Does anyone have a good workaround for this? Or has it been fixed yet somehow. Just built 40-map data driven set and the frames rotate different angles - but the legends polygon hatches don't rotate, making the fills super confusing....why?!!!

wayfaringrob

@MichaelAugust  9 years later, not fixed. "Pro" 3.0.2. 🤦🏼‍:male_sign:

rburkebsrc_0-1666884631754.png

What I really don't like about this is that you have to go manually add the rotation of your map to each individual symbol class. In my opinion, they should be relative to the rotation of your map -- in other words, a hatch with a 45-degree angle should appear on the map at a 45-degree angle, rather than 45-degrees to north, or whatever it does. Further, the rotation fields in the panes don't seem to support decimals, but the data frame does, so you can't really get things to match up properly, even when you go and manually change each symbol.

wayfaringrob

Ok, here's another inconsistency: with labeling, those appear in relation to the map orientation, so why would symbology be different? Here, I have address labels set to either 90 or 180, and they appear at those angles in relation to the data frame/page -- which is desired. Symbology should do the same thing.

rburkebsrc_0-1666887451199.png

To make things more confusing, when converting your labels to annotation, THEN they suddenly have a rotation, and appear in a crooked box angled to north rather than your map.

 

rburkebsrc_1-1666895508115.png

 

 

wayfaringrob

Even more issues - this is what an 'align right' for my annotation features looks like:

rburkebsrc_1-1666895807290.png

They're aligning to a random north-south meridan rather than 'right.'