Smart map styles

When you use a smart map style, the available options depend on the type of data you are mapping (points, lines, or polygons) or type of data attributes (numbers, categories, dates, and so on) that you select. Each style helps you to answer questions with the data.

Learn more about smart map styles in the ArcGIS tutorial series Smart mapping styles in Map Viewer.

The following table provides a reference of the smart map styles available and some of the questions you can answer using each style:

Data type or attribute and example	Question	Smart map style
Location only Examples: Retail locations (points) Rivers or roads (lines) City boundaries (polygons)	What kind of features are on this map? How is the data distributed geographically?	Location (single symbol)
Location only Examples: Customer addresses (points) Traffic incidents (points) Rainfall > 1.0 inches (24-hour) (points)	Where is the data clustered? Where are areas that lack data or incidents?	Location (single symbol) Heat map
One numeric data type Examples: Building height River length Household income	Can I compare data features to each other based on their numeric values? Where are the highest and lowest values in the data geographically?	Counts and amounts (size) Counts and amounts (color)
Compare two numeric data types Examples: New businesses to businesses older than 5 years Health insurance rate to hospitalizations	Are there any outliers in the data? Where is the relationship pattern the strongest or weakest?	Color and size
One non-numeric data type Examples: Retailer by type Highways by type Language spoken at home	How is the data distributed or summarized by category? How can I group data outliers?	Type (unique symbols)
One numeric and one non-numeric data type Examples: Income level and occupation type Water volume per water network Building location and seismic rating	Where are the highest and lowest values? How is the data distributed by category?	Type and size