Single-click selection: Only one of many overlapping features selected; what logic is used?

[Bud]

I have a shapefile that has overlapping polygons. I've used the Select tool to try to select all the polygons at a specific location -- at the red dot in the screenshot below:

I've single-clicked at that location, which has selected a single polygon:

It seems like ArcGIS Pro is behaving differently than ArcMap did.

• ArcGIS Pro selects just a single polygon, even if there are multiple overlapping polygons at that location.
  • Note: I'm aware that using a different selection technique, such as select-by-rectangle, behaves differently: all overlapping polygons get selected. But that's not the focus of this question; the focus is single-click selections.
• Whereas ArcMap would have selected all of the polygons at that location when doing a single-click selection: 
  

As a new ArcGIS Pro user, that difference in selection behavior threw me off a bit. I didn't understand why all the polygons at that location weren't being selected.

Further, I would have thought that the top-most polygon would have been the one that got selected. But it doesn't seem to work that way; a polygon that is lower in the stack has been selected.

Question:

What logic is used for single-click selections when there are multiple overlapping features? How does ArcGIS Pro determine what single feature to select?

Thanks.

ArcGIS Pro 3.0.2.

[DuncanHornby]

I was curious about this, I can't answer why it selects a polygon lower in the stack of overlapping features, I guess it might be down to the spatial index? Someone from ESRI should be able to answer that question. But playing around with the different selection tools I discovered one needs to draw a small area, instead of a single click, as shown below:

Using different select tools

May be ESRI could improve the tool as I too would have expected the select tool to select all overlapping features in the stack of overlays.

[Bud]

Thanks!

Side question: What software do you use to do video capture to GIFs?

[DuncanHornby]

I think it was @KoryKramer  who put me on to it, he deserves the credit. It is screen to gif , really simple to use and very affective, you can even post-edit your mini movie, say clip out a boring section before you export to gif.

[Bud]

Whoa. That worked great.

The GIF I made ended up being 31 MB. It looks like that's too big to upload to the Esri community:

The file test_gif exceeds the maximum allowed size (9.79 MB).

So I guess the challenge is to keep the files under 9.79 MB?

[Bud]

Maybe posting the recording as a true video in My Videos is a better option than a GIF.

[jcarlson]

I would assume objectid in ascending order? Click overlapping objectids 3, 5, and 6, 3 will get selected first. That's how it seems to behave for me in some simple tests.

But display order, I believe that is objectid descending. So those same overlapping shapes will show 6 at the top of the stack.

AGOL lets you define feature display order, but I don't think that is in Pro as of yet.

[BarryNorthey]

ArcGIS Pro displays a chip to signal that there are overlapping features at the click point, which might not be obvious when using Single Symbol symbology. The chip provides the user with the ability to select/flash any intersected feature including the "top one". The chip's pick list honors the layer's Display Field, which can also be an expression to help with feature selection/identification. To select all the intersected features, ignore the chip and drag a "tiny" shape at the same click point.