I am trying to dissolve the symbology of a layer, so that all the individual polygons appear as one. Basically, if you took the 'Dissolve' tool and ran that to dissolve a polygon feature class, that's what I want.
I've gone through the 'Symbol Level Drawing' procedure here:
Basically, I have a bunch of polygons that represent areas of disturbance (i.e. a forest clear cut). I have a Text field I use and populate 'Y' if it is a clear cut polygon and 'N' if it is not. I use that field as my 'Value Field' in the Help menu procedure above. I follow every step verbatim and I still get the lines. See the attached image. The gray hatching represents the clear cuts. Within that layer, you can see the the lines that separate the individual clear cut polygons.
I can't use the 'Dissolve' tool because it creates a new feature class. For various reason, I cannot use a new feature class.
Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately I cannot merge the features in the database. I use this feature class in multiple layers and I need the features to be separate in order to symbolize the other layers properly.
My suggestion is to remove the outline on the hatch and decrease the seperation of the lines to give the overlay better definition.
They'll cope without an outline (from experience).
If you are really worried about losing the outline, add another version of the layer under the hatch and make it solid white with no outline. Then set the transparency and the colours of the other polygons should bleed through but your hatched are will still have definition.
Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately I cannot merge the features in the database. I use this feature class in multiple layers and I need the features to be separate in order to symbolize the other layers properly.
I don't think the suggestion was to get rid of these features, just to create a new feature class that has all the polys of a given type merged so you can achieve the effect you want. Is this impossible to do if you consider the result of the merge a 'throwaway' product that exists solely for the purposes of this map? That way you preserve the actual data but achieve the cartographic need. Analytical and cartographic needs are often at odds with one another in this way.
