Cartography: from Drawing to Database (Technology Facilitates Traditional Styles)

The convenience of database-driven cartography has traditionally been offset by the design limitations of automated symbology. To address this, ArcGIS 9.2 introduces a rule-based way to store cartographic symbology alongside spatial data within a geodatabase. Symbology is applied intelligently to spatial features through powerful representation rules to achieve complex depictions. Geometric effects within rules can dynamically alter spatial geometry before symbology is applied, and values within the feature class table can define symbol properties to customize the appearance of features. The new framework offers geoprocessing tools that can automate aspects of symbolization and detect areas where symbols overlap even when the spatial geometry does not. The intelligent combination of the components of the representation framework can result in intricate and insightful database cartography. This paper investigates the potential of the representation framework by building and describing a set of representation rules and geoprocessing models that experiment with traditional cartographic depictions that have proven difficult to automate in the past.