Esri Mapping Center - Ask a Cartographer

How do I constrain the proportions of leader lines?

June 04 2007 | 2 comments
Categories: Labeling, Symbology

I’m trying to draw some leaders from points to the labels and I typically draw leaders like in the below image (leaderlines.gif). In other programs that I’ve used (MapInfo and any graphics program), one can hold down shift to

-preserve 90 or 45 degree line angles

-after a graphic was drawn could be used to scale proportionally the graphic object using the handles that appear around a graphic object.

As far as I can tell, Edit Vertices doesn’t do those things.

Mapping Center Answer:

I'm afraid all I can do is confirm that there’s no way to do that task interactively. For the line callout, they only way to effectively do what you’re asking is to individually edit the “Gap” property of the callout—-a multi-dialog process that would compound the tedium. If you’re VBA inclined, and need to this task a bit more often than is pleasant; you could write a macro to adjust the gap distance for the selected text elements.

Sorry there’s not a good answer, I did let the development team know what you asked for.

Attachment: LeaderLine.gif

Controlling the Gap posted by Mamie Anding on Jun 11 2008 11:43AM

How would you control the gap on the callout leader? I don't mind doing it for a few at a time.

One at a time is the only interactive solution to posted by Charlie Frye on Jun 11 2008 12:27PM

Interactively, the process is limited to a one at a time edit to each feature's text symbol, and specifically the text background properties (which include leader lines)--unfortunately the Editor does not support group edits. The place you can most rapidly change the leader gap on annotation is via the Attributes window when you've got an annotation feature selected; just click the Leader button. Here's a screenshot from my computer.

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