How To Smart Map
Make beautiful maps, Fast!
What is Smart Mapping?
Smart mapping is here to help you create beautiful and informative maps, quickly. This guide is here to explain what smart mapping is, and how to get started using this special capability.
In its simplest form, smart mapping is a solution customized for your map and your data, which is why we call it “smart”! With just a few clicks, you can create a clear story about your data.
Not a cartographer? Don’t worry! Smart defaults take the guesswork out of your map-making process, and help you get to a clear map more quickly. Smart mapping is designed to make your maps beautiful, while showcasing your data’s important values.
Do you have a background in cartography? Awesome! Smart mapping provides new and existing mapping techniques to help you create stunning online maps.
Smart mapping is available in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise, and appears when working with your hosted layers. To use smart mapping, select the Change Style option within a feature layer’s context menu.
Smart mapping can be broken down into 3 simple steps:
1) Choose Attribute(s)
2) Select a Drawing Style
3) Explore the Options
1) Choose Attribute(s)
To start, choose an attribute to show in your map using the drop down list of attributes from your layer.
To explore patterns within your data, select a second attribute by using the "Add attribute" button. You can use this technique to find possible relationships between two seemingly different topics.
Select up to five different numeric attributes (of similar nature) to find the predominant value among them.
Oops! You may not want to show an attribute you selected. You can easily remove attributes from the map by using the circled X that appears when you have chosen more than one attribute.
To simply show your features on the map, choose the "Show location only" option.
2) Select a Drawing Style
Once you have selected an attribute (or multiple attributes), smart mapping will suggest drawing styles based on the attribute type.
For example:
In this map, smart mapping recognized that a categorical attribute was chosen, so it created this "Types" map as the default.
When working with smart mapping, the current drawing style will appear with a blue check-mark.
Now, a numeric attribute was selected, and smart mapping provided options to display the values within the data. This is known as Counts and Amounts.
Counts and Amounts can be shown using either Color or Size. You can see the difference by the graphic used for each drawing style option.
To choose a new drawing style, click "Select" on the option you want to use.
If the drawing style is changed to Size, the map will change as a preview of the new drawing style.
As you make changes, smart mapping also provides a preview of your map's Legend.
Selecting two or more attributes will continue to change the drawing style options.
Smart mapping offers appropriate options based on the types of attributes selected.
Here, two numerical attributes were chosen, so we see different ways that smart mapping can draw these attributes.
Use Color and Size to show both attributes on the map.
Use Compare A to B to see various representations of the ratio between your attribute A versus attribute B.
Use Predominant Category to show which attribute has a larger value.
Don't be afraid to try different drawing styles! These are just a few of the available options.
You can always click "Cancel" if a style doesn't create the map you want.
3) Explore the Options
Each drawing style provides different options, allowing you to customize your maps beyond the smart defaults. Here are a few pointers to familiarize you with some of the most common options:
Once you select a drawing style, choose Options to continue exploring your data.
Depending on your attribute and data type, you can change things such as:
- The data classification method
- The symbol size
- The symbol color and shape
- The transparency of the features
- The rotation of the symbols
Notice that there is also a histogram (graph) to help you understand how your data is distributed. By default, the map is set to highlight significant high and low values (+/- 1 standard deviation).
Move the Transparency slider to make the features more/less opaque.
You can also set transparency using the values of an attribute in your dataset.
Select the attribute, and adjust the different transparency values. Use this technique to emphasize specific values within you data.
You can see in this example, the Legend now contains a graphic to explain the use of transparency.
You can also classify your numeric data using common cartographic classification methods such as Natural Breaks, Standard Deviation, Equal Interval, Quantile, or Manual breaks.
Simply choose the "Classify Data" box to display these classic methods.
Select a different drawing style to visualize your data in a new way. Sometimes, simply changing the style can make a map clearer to your audience. Just visualizing the data in a different way can also be eye opening.
If you choose a different basemap, smart mapping will adjust the available options so that your data will contrast well with the map's background.
The Light Grey and Dark Grey basemaps help to create a neutral background for your map.
Others are valuable for highlighting references on the land such as points of interest, freeways, or natural landscape features.
To change the color, outline, shape, or size of your features, click Symbols to view the different options.
Keep in mind that different data types will provide different variations of this button!
When mapping with the Color drawing style, the Fill option will provide various color-blind friendly ramps to choose from (seen to the left).
If you map symbols using Size or Location, you will be provided different colors to choose from:
Certain types of data, such as points, will produce slightly different options available within the smart mapping interface.
But don't worry! Smart mapping will always suggest options that work with your specific combination of data and attribute choices. So feel free to try out different combinations and options, because your map will go back to its previous cartography until you use the DONE button.
What Next?
Don't be afraid to try different options and combine different variables. Smart mapping is a great way to explore patterns in your data that you may not have found otherwise.
Want to learn more? Check out some of the links below, which can help get you started.
Explore the maps seen in this story map. You can even go into the smart mapping settings and see how they were created.
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