Esri Mapping Center - Ask a Cartographer

Problem with data frame alignment

March 25 2009 | 4 comments
Categories: Page Layout

I'm using the Align tools to align the corner of my dataframes and labels.

I first snap my data frames to my guides and then align the labels to the top-right corner

As you can see on the attachment, the data frame isn't right on the guide even though it is snapped to it. When I align the label to the corner of the data frame, it is right on the guide (but wasn't snapped) which tells me there's something wrong with my data frames.

I have other graphic items in my map and the snap works fine. It's only a problem that occurs from time to time...

Do you have any idea why?

Thanks!

Mapping Center Answer:

So, saying that the guides and snapping works better than it ever has, isn't going to be helpful. In fact I learned not to use the guides years ago (when snapping to them behaved even worse). What I do instead is use the Size and Position tab (in element and data frame properties) and do my positioning by the numbers (if you've ever used ArcPlot, it's pretty much the same thing, only you're using dialog boxes instead of AML). That's the only sure way to get the sort of layout you're doing to align exactly.

Attachment: dataframes_snap

Thanks! posted by François Turcotte-Goulet on Mar 25 2009 8:48AM

It works, but I just don't understand why if I add a new data frame, the snapping works fine now... When I move one of my "faulty" data frame, I see a blue line around it so I know that there's something creating the offset, but I can't figure where it comes from... I don't have any gap in my frame properties nor any offset on the line symbol for the frame... strange.

The snapping works fine... posted by François Turcotte-Goulet on Mar 25 2009 8:54AM

Well, I don't think the guide and snapping is the problem... my data frame is... And the advantage of the snapping is that it's a lot faster!

Thanks for the help! :)

Problem solved!! posted by François Turcotte-Goulet on Mar 25 2009 10:07AM

I didn't find it myself, but I had a disabled grid left in my dataframe. Everything, ticks and labels were inside the data frame, but it created an offset. When I deleted it, everything went back to normal. I'll still have the same problem when I'll be using a grid, but at least I know where it comes from.

Good catch posted by Charlie Frye on Mar 26 2009 12:29PM

Thanks for posting the cause--hopefully that will help others as well.

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