Military operations features
Military operations features consist of points, lines, and areas that cannot be represented as UEI features. The military symbol specifications supported by ArcGIS refer to the symbols that make up the military operations features as tactical graphics. These include command and control (C2) features, such as unit boundaries, special area designations and tasks, that are necessary for battlefield planning and management. Meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) symbology and some emergency management (EMS) symbols are also included in military operations features. The size and shape of military operations points are fixed, but the lines and areas are determined by drawing parameters and the scale of the background.
Military operations feature layers, which include the symbology, geodatabase schema, label properties and feature templates for adding features to a map, are distributed in the ArcGIS 10 layer packages in the ArcGIS for Defense and Intelligence group on ArcGIS.com. This site includes The Military Overlay layer package as well as several other layer packages that contain military features. The Military Overlay layer package contains all of the point, line and area features and feature templates for friendly, hostile, neutral and unknown command and control military operations, meteorological and oceanographic, and all of emergency management natural events.
The symbols that are used to display military operations features are stored in three style files. The style files are installed when you install ArcGIS Desktop. The point symbols are picture marker symbols and the line and area symbols are stored as representation rules. The following table lists the symbol set and the style file it is stored in. The type of symbols that are stored in the style file is shown by an "X" in the last two columns.
Military Operations features symbol set | Style file | Marker Symbols | Representation Rules |
|---|---|---|---|
Command and control military operations | C2 Military Operations.style | X | X |
Meteorological and oceanographic | Military METOC.style | X | X |
Emergency management | Military Emergency Management.style | X |
Learn more about symbols and styles
Learn more about representation rules
Military operations points
Military operations point features are symbolized with picture marker symbols. The picture marker symbols are stored in the style files listed in the table above. The layers that contain military operations point features, such as friendly operations points or METOC points in the Military Overlay layer package, are unique values layers. This means a different symbol is used to represent each of the points in the layer based on an attribute value. Each symbol in the military operations points layers is uniquely identified by its name. You can edit the text that will appear next to each symbol in the Table of Contents by clicking the text in the Label column. By default, they are the same as the values. The graphic below shows the Layer Properties dialog for the Friendly Military Operations points layer from the Friendly Operations.lpk. In this case, the value and label both come from the SymbolName attribute field. The values have been grouped into headings. Check Point, Decision Point, and Coordination Point are grouped together under the Action Points heading.
You can modify the size of the symbol in the Symbol Selector dialog. Double-click on the symbol to open the Symbol Selector. Change the size and click OK.
Military operations lines and areas
The layers that contain military operations line and area features, such as friendly operations lines or hostile operations areas in the Military Overlay layer package, are displayed with representations. The representations and individual representation rules that are used to display features such as phase lines and areas of operations have already been created for you in the military features layer packages on ArcGIS.com. Only the present status of the symbols have been included. In general, line and area features will be a solid line when indicating present status and a dashed line when indicating anticipated or planned status. To indicate anticipated or planned status, you will need to modify the existing representation rule or create a new rule. For an understanding of how representations are used, see What are representations?.
A cartographic representation is a set of symbols, rules, overrides and graphic edits that provide more control and precision for how features are displayed on the map. The additional control over the appearance of the features allow military features in ArcGIS to support military symbol specifications.
Representation rules that depict military features are stored in the style files listed in the beginning of this topic. Regardless of geometry type, they are all stored in the Representation Rules folder. Polygon Representation rules, such as Objective, are stored in the same folder as line representation rules, like the Axis of Advance Aviation.
A Representation rule is constructed from symbol layers, defined by their basic symbol type: marker, line, or fill. Geometric effects are added to the basic symbol type to create complex representations.
When you click on a representation rule in the list of representation rules in the Layer Properties dialog, a box is drawn around it. Each representation rule is assigned a unique RuleID. The RuleID is 37 for the Axis of Advance Aviation representation line rule. The properties of a selected representation rule is shown in the right pane. These can include the basic symbol layers, as well as geometric effects. An arrow effect was applied to a line to make the axis of advance airborne symbol. To learn more about symbol layers and geometric effects, see the topics Working with symbol layers and Working with geometric effects.
Creating new military operations line or area features
License:Creating, modifying, or deleting representations requires an ArcEditor license or higher. Representations can be viewed and drawn with an ArcView license.
You may need to represent a military operations feature using planned status. The representation rules can be modified, but the suggested way to do this is to create a new representation rule. Creating a new rule based on an existing rule allows you to keep the original representation rule used for the symbol with present status in your list of available representation rules.
To duplicate a representation rule in order to depict it as planned or anticipated, follow the steps shown in the graphic.
- Click on the representation rule that you want to change the status
- Click the Rule Options button and then Duplicate Rule in the drop down.
- Click the Add geometric effect button to open the list of geometric effects.
- Click the Dashes geometric effect to add it to the rule.
Your new rule will be added to the list of available representation rules and to the Table of Contents. By default, the representation rule name will be Rule_146. Click on the representation rule to change it. For example, type AA Airborne Planned.
The final step is to create the new feature template.
Changing the appearance of one military operations feature in a map
There may be times when you want to modify just one feature in your map, but it belongs to a group of features. For example, you may want to change the width of one arrow. You can do this by overriding representation rules. Overrides are created from the Representation toolbar during an edit session. To resize a feature representation, such as the width of an arrow, follow these steps.
- In an edit session, select one or more feature representations using the Select tool
or the Lasso Select tool 
on the Representation toolbar. - Click the Resize tool
. - Click and drag to resize the selected feature representation.