GIS Tool: Styles and Layer Files
/In Episode 9 talked about geodatabase templates, so I’d like to further that conversation by talking about style files and layer files in this post (and Episode 10).
Style files and layer files are like templates, but for visual aspects of your map like symbols, colors, labels, etc.
Not this type of container!
Style files are containers for symbols. These can be point, line or polygon symbols, and the symbols can be copied from other styles or can be created from scratch or from existing symbols. Style files can be shared with others so members of an organization or group can make maps that look consistent. You can also make them available to others outside of your organization, and there are new style files for ArcGIS Pro.
I got style for miles and miles…
I used to download style files pretty frequently, but they’re getting harder to find (at least for me - if you have sources of your own, please share them in the comments below). One style file I have used in the past is the Washington State Highway symbols. You can download highway symbols from any state here!
Layer files are also templates of sorts; they are saved settings for a particular layer of data. These not only draw symbols in a particular way, but can also store definition queries (which are kind of like data filters), label settings, transparency, field aliases, and other layer settings. You can share these with others as long as they also have access to the data.
Quit sending me your cats!
I used to share layer files with my organization, particularly for our Washington Water Bodies layer. If a user brought in the dataset and didn’t symbolize it or set definition queries, it looked like the whole state was covered by water bodies and this confused a lot of people. I filtered it so that only lakes larger than a certain acreage were shown, and set colors, transparency and label settings so that users could just pull the layer file into their map and it would be ready to go.
If you want to share a layer file with someone who doesn’t have access to the data, you can create a layer package, which includes the data as well as all of the drawing settings.