Labeling in your schematic diagrams
Labels can be dynamically displayed on schematic features contained in your schematic diagrams. They are based on schematic attributes stored in the schematic feature classes—schematic attributes with Field storage—or on any other attribute returned by a join specified on the feature layers related to the schematic feature classes.
Labeling schematic features is done using the Standard and Maplex Label Engines in ArcMap.
- The Labeling toolbar contains the various buttons that will allow you to control labeling on schematic features, and the Label Manager lets you view and change labeling properties for all the label classes in your schematic diagrams.
- The The Maplex Label Engine provides a special set of tools that allows you to improve the quality of the labels in your schematic diagrams and control their positioning and size.
Feature annotations can also be used to describe your schematic features or add general information on your schematic diagrams. Labels on your schematic features can also be converted to standard feature annotations, but they cannot be converted to feature-linked annotations—the Feature Linked check box on the Convert Labels to Annotation dialog box is unavailable for any feature layer related to a schematic feature class.
Labeling schematic diagrams in the same way
When the configuration of labels on the feature layers that compose a schematic layer is complete in ArcMap, you can export the schematic layer as a layer file and use Schematic Dataset Editor to import the layer properties as default schematic layer properties for your diagram template. This allows you to get all schematic diagrams based on that diagram template represented with the same labels.
Tips
Labeling on schematic containers
When using the Standard Label Engine, labels on schematic containers with a polyline geometry are easier to customize than on containers with a polygon geometry. To manage labels on schematic containers that use a polygon geometry, it is recommended that you operate with the Maplex Label Engine.
For example, the labeling of schematic containers is often on the outside of the schematic features. When using the Standard Label Engine to display labels on schematic containers represented by a polyline, labels can be displayed on the outside of the containers (labels in purple on the Figure 1 below). For schematic containers that use a polygon geometry, they can only display inside (Figure 2.1). In this case, you need to use the Maplex Label Engine to get the labels outside (Figure 2.2).
Stacking labels on schematic features
When labels on your schematic features have a large horizontal length or when they represent concatenated attribute values, for example, labels coming from a formatted schematic attribute, you can use the Maplex Label Engine to split them into parts and stack these parts to reduce the labels' horizontal length.
The following figure shows red labels on schematic links after they have been stacked. The multiple lines correspond with multiple attribute values that were initially concatenated in one line, each attribute value being separated using the hyphen (-) text character. This is the specific character that has been used to automatically split the label as shown in Figure 3.