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How to position contour labels in Maplex above the line?

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04-14-2011 10:34 AM
JakubSisak
Honored Contributor
I would like to utilize the "contour placement" options of "Uphill alignment" and "Laddering" while positioning the label above the contour not over it. This does not seem to be an option under the contour placement where it's forcing me to place the contour over the line. (Which makes no sense in ArcGIS since there is easy way to mask that portion of the line efficiently. Possible but very cumbersome and not dynamic) I tried the other placement options in Maplex but then "Uphill Alingment" and "Laddering" is not longer an option.

Does anyone has a good way of doing this?

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there. another GIS Stack Exchange cross post....
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3 Replies
JonMorris
Deactivated User
Hi Jakub,

When we developed contour labeling for Maplex, we didn't envisage that users would want offset contour labels - there seems to be too much potential for ambiguity, especially if the contours are close together. I've certainly never seen a map with offset contour labels.

I'll make a note of it for a future enhancement though. It's too late for 10.1 unfortunately, but we can consider it next time around.

In the meantime, have you tried using halos around your labels? With a uniform background, a halo will look just as good as masking the features. If the background color is changing, you'll have to pick a complimentary color.
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JakubSisak
Honored Contributor
Thanks Jon. Yes i have used the halos but this is only a solution for maps with solid color background. Usually, topographic maps i produce include shaded relief or DEM symbolized with graduated color intervals or both. In actuality i'd prefer to have a contour label the way it is (positioned over the line) but instead of the halo it needs to mask a small portion of the contour (or any other feature i choose in the close proximity so as not to obscure the label itself)
It would be fantastic to have this feature a part of the dynamic labeling.

My current workaround is as follows:
Label features
Export to Annotations
Clean up annotations manually
Convert annotations to polygons
Buffer annotation polygons by an appropriate distance
used buffered annotation as Mask in the Advanced Drawing Options

The result is perfect, but very much static and quite labor intensive

Hence the workaround for quick interoffice maps would be to utilize the same Maplex options but move the label above the line.  This is especially important when using major and minor contour lines as i typically label only the major contours. Being thicker, the major contour is too obstructed when the label is positioned directly over the line.

I still do this with maplex but i loose the nice laddering and uphill orientation options.
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WendyHarrison
Esri Contributor
Hi,

You can combine these two steps

Convert annotations to polygons
Buffer annotation polygons by an appropriate distance

by using the Feature Outline Masks tool

-Wendy Harrison, Esri
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