About symbols

Symbols define all the nongeographic aspects of the appearance of a feature on the map. The ArcGIS Viewer for Silverlight provides many options to symbolize features. Layers that get their data from a layer in an ArcGIS for Server map service or a table in a Spatial Data Service also allow the configuration of symbology, as these layer types are rendered on the client. See Layer types for more information.

To get started configuring symbols, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Configure Layers panel and click the desired layer.
2. Right-click the layer and click Configure. Alternatively, click the Configure button at the bottom of the Configure Layers panel. See the following screen shot:
3. On the Configuring panel that appears, click Symbology to view the configuration options.

Renderers

Renderers define one or more symbols to apply to a layer. There are three types of renderers available in the Viewer: single symbol, class breaks, and unique values.

Single symbol renderers apply one symbol to all features in a layer. For information on how to symbolize layers with a single symbol, see Single symbol rendering.

Class breaks and unique values renderers apply symbols to features in a layer based on attributes of each feature. The renderer specifies which attribute values correspond to which symbol. For information on using the class breaks renderer, see Class breaks rendering. For information on how to symbolize a layer by unique values, see Unique value rendering.

Heat maps and clustering

Point layers also provide the option to generate a heat map or apply clustering. These are methods of aggregating features to aid in visualizing them.

For more information on configuring heat maps, see Heat maps.

For more information on configuring clustering, see Clustering.