Set Symbology for Selected Features

[Jocelynvan_den_Akker]

It would be great if you could set the symbology for the features that are currently selected. This would allow a group of features to be classified based on something other than data without selecting/exporting a layer and would be particularly useful for larger datasets. I am trying right now to use it to mark census blocks that I have QC'ed. The only method that I can think of currently is to set the symbology layer for unique values and manually change the symbology as I finish each block. It helps in symbolozing features as a group that would not normally be grouped together, ie. selecting which areas work crews should be focusing on or houses for sale in an area, without creating a new field or layer.

[RobertBorchert]

there is merit, however I think symbology needs to stay focused on attributes

What your asking is a very common practice in AutoCAD and I can tell you from experience that in AutoCAD when a technician changes a symbol for a selected attribute insted of moving it to the proper layer it causes innumerable errors down the road.

However, doing so in ArcGIS would only change it in an MXD and not permanently in a database so I think it would be workable.

I  have done something similar in the past.  I created and attribute to symbolize off of.  I then created all the varaiations in symbology for the values I was going to need.

then I could select a number of featurs and give them the appropiate attribute and they would all change.

[Anneka_France]

We would find this very useful. For example, sometimes we want to highlight points in story maps. This is not necessarily based on attributes, but sometimes just based on the narrative, so it does not make sense to add extra fields to record this in the data set. 

[RobertBorchert]

Actually this has been built into ArcMAP since I started using it with version 9.3

Open the Layer Properties and click on the Selection Tab and click on the with this symbol.  Then change the symbol to what you want.  Whenever you select a feature in that feature class it will change. I used this technique for my first GIS presentation back in 2002

[Anneka_France]

I believe this is an idea for ArcGIS Online?

[DeanFisk]

This would be really useful in pro as we have been able to use Arcmap in this way for many years. For us, we have to create a legal document for Tree Preservation Orders and we only want to show the Tree Layers relevant to the order, not other features nearby.  We set the layers to clear symbology and had set up the selection colour and symbology how we wanted so all we had to do was draw a box and it showed only the Tree Layers relevant to the order. I guess our workaround is to use Defenition Query but that will take more time than simply drawing a selection box.