North arrow shrinks on rotation - data driven pages

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09-30-2021 02:12 PM
Sean_Wray
Occasional Contributor

I am having a problem with my north arrow getting smaller on each page as the data frame rotates. My north arrow symbol has a center anchor point. It stays in the right place, but  it shrinks slightly on every page as it rotates! So every page it gets smaller and smaller. I am using ArcGIS Desktop 10.8.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

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3 Replies
jcarlson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Just a guess, as I'm not using the same software to verify. Perhaps your north arrow has a defined bounding box, and as the arrow rotates within that box, it has to shrink to fit?

jcarlson_0-1633037491656.png

jcarlson_1-1633037516833.png

Try setting the bounding box of the north arrow to a perfect square, or else choose an arrow style that is not elongated.

Any luck?

Also, screenshots might be helpful if the issue persists.

- Josh Carlson
Kendall County GIS
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Sean_Wray
Occasional Contributor

Josh thanks,

How do I set the shape of the bounding box? Here is the arrow I'm using. At this point changing styles would be problematic as all other maps made for the project use this style.

SeanWray1_0-1633037967711.png 

SeanWray1_1-1633038021140.png

Sean Wray

 

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jcarlson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Sorry, "bounding box" is terminology from another program. What happens to your arrow when you change the width/height under Size? I see that the "preserve aspect ratio" box is greyed out, so you may be out of luck.

Could you create a copy of the north arrow that simply has negative space on the sides to make it a perfect square? Of course, this still won't help for diagonals, as the main square would shrink to fit within the original size. If that's what's happening here, which we're still not certain of.

Can you give a few screenshots of what the rotated arrows look like in the output?

I may have a remote machine that still has ArcMap on it, and I'll see if I can replicate this.

- Josh Carlson
Kendall County GIS