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• How to open ArcMap and a Map Document (.mxd) • How to alter Map Feature Symbology
• How to examine your spatial data using ArcCatalog • How to add essential Map Elements (North Arrow,
• How to add spatial data to your Map Document Legend, etc…) for effective map creation
• How to add tabular data to a Map Document and • How to modify the properties of a data frame.
turn it into spatial data • How to set relative pathnames to allow you to move
• How to join tabular data to geographic boundary files and share your Map Projects
• The difference between Data View and Layout View • How to export your map to PDF and JPG
• How to label Map Features
You should receive a confirmation email shortly afterward, with instruction on how to use the GIS-L list.
What is critical to recognize about the contents of this folder is that all
of the files with the same filename are actually part of a single
“shapefile.” The shapefile is ESRI proprietary vector data format.
The fact that it is called a shapefile can cause some confusion, since
it is actually a collection of files.
5. Click on the Preview Tab, at the top of the Catalog Display, to Preview the Data in this layer.
6. Click on the Metadata Tab, at the top of the Catalog Display, to View information about this shapefile.
1. In the Arccatalog Catalog Tree, Scroll to the bottom of the Folder Group you are
currently browsing and find the “Intro_To_Arcgis” File. This is the Map Document
(Intro_to_ArcGIS.mxd) that we will start the tutorial with.
2. Double-Click on the Intro_to_ArcGIS.mxd to Launch Arcmap and Open the Map Document.
Main
Menu
Standard
Toolbar
DataMap
Layers
Display
“Tools”
Toolbar
Map
Display
“View”
Toolbar
Table of
Contents
You should now see something like what is shown above (don’t worry about the little red exclamation marks, yet). Take a few
seconds to familiarize yourself with the ArcMap interface.
• The Main Menu should be familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft Windows software. It is where you perform basic
file and document editing functions.
• The Table of Contents is the area where your data layers will be listed and where you can interact with and alter the
properties of individual layers.
• The Add Data Button is located on the “Standard” Toolbar and opens a dialog box that allows new layers to be
added to the Table of Contents and Map Document. It should not be confused with the Open Document button,
which is located on the same toolbar, but is not unique to ArcMap.
• The Map Display is the area where your map data will be displayed.
• The “Tools” Toolbar contains a series of tools that operate on the data displayed in the Map Document Window.
• The View Toolbar changes between the Data View and Layout View of the Map Document.
1. Right-Click on the
“Area_of_Interest_polygon_polygon” Layer, which is
the first layer in the Table Of Contents Panel.
You should be left with something that looks similar to the ArcMap
window below. Note that when all of the data sources are in the same folder, ArcMap will repair all of the broken links in the Map
Document.
1. Click-And-Drag your Layers in the Table Of Contents Panel until their order
reflects that shown in the image at the right.
Note that the order of layers in the Table of Contents Panel determines the order of display
in the Map Display Panel.
2. Check the Checkboxes next to the Two Layers (municipalproperty and DEPProperty) that are Unchecked.
Note that the checkboxes determine whether the layer is visible, or not.
2. Drag a Box across the Central Part of the Map Display Panel to Zoom Into the Data View.
3. Click on the Back To Previous Extent Button to Return to the Previous Map Display
View.
4. Click on the Fixed Zoom Out Button to Zoom Out of your Map Display at fixed
intervals.
5. Select the Pan Tool from the Tools Toolbar and use it to Move your Map Display.
6. Click on the Full Extent Button to Zoom Out to the extent of the Layer in your Map
Document with the largest extent.
Note that the Source Tab in the Table of Contents is now active, and this new data
layer is visible there, but there has been no change in the Map Display window. This is
because the data you have added is a table, rather than a shapefile and it does not yet
have an explicit geographic display.
Note that there are a number of attribute fields for the features in this table. Most
importantly, there are numeric fields with Latitude & Longitude Coordinates in Decimal
Degrees that we can use to display this data.
8. In the resulting ”Spatial Reference Properties” Dialog, Click on the Select Button.
9. Browse to Geographic Coordinate Systems>North America>North American Datum 1983.prj, Select it and Click
Add.
You will be warned that the resulting layer does not contain Object-ID’s and
you will be restricted in what you can do with it.
13. In the resulting Export Data Dialog, Change the “Use The Same
Coordinate System As:” to “The Data Frame.”
This is a shortcut to projecting your data to the same projection as the rest of the
data in this Map Document.
2. Click on the Option Button of the Attribute Table and Go To “Select By Attributes.”
3. In the Select By Attributes Dialog, Make Sure that “Create New Selection” is the Method.
6. Click “Get Unique Values,” and Double-Click ‘school’ from the results.
8. Click the Verify Button to verify the query syntax (not really necessary here,
but complex queries on large datasets can crash ArcMap if the syntax is
invalid). Click Ok.
14. Leave the Coordinate System as the Default this time and Click
Ok.
1. Use the Add Data Button to Add the tgr09000sf1blk.dbf Table from the C:\temp\your_initials\01-Introduction to
ArcGIS\Data\Tabular Folder.
2. Use the Add Data Button to Add the tgr09009blk00.shp shapefile from the C:\temp\your_initials\01-
Introduction to ArcGIS\Data\Shapefiles Folder.
You will be warned that one of your datasets is missing its “spatial reference.” Your table of Contents view will also change back
to the Source Tab, since you have just added a table of data, as well as a shapefile.
Note that you probably cannot see the Census Block Group files we just added, tgr09009blk00.shp (If you can see the file, you are
likely using ArcGIS version 9.1 or before). This is because the dataset does not have a *.prj file, which contains information about
how the numeric values that record the point, line and polygons in the dataset, relate to geographic location on the face of the
Earth. This means that you need to ‘define’ the coordinate or projection system.
Prior to ArcGIS 9.2, the software would examine the numeric values that recorded the geometry of the boundaries and, if the
values fell within the normal Lat/Lon values (-90 to 90 & -180 to 180), it applied an “assumed geographic coordinate system” using
the North American Datum from 1927. This worked, sometimes. But what if your data was located in India? The NAD 1927
Datum is not nearly as accurate as current datums, and is wildly inaccurate for any dataset falling outside North America. Also,
much of the data you work with in GIS is now created on the NAD 1983 datum, a far more accurate reference system.
So, ESRI dropped the assumed geographic feature, so that you must now explicitly assign the correct coordinate system.
Unfortunately, ESRI has not updated much of its available data to reflect this new lack of automation, and much of the base data
they provide (not to mention that included with the last 20 years of software releases) still has no defined coordinate system /
projection. Here, we will learn to remedy that, and familiarize you with the
ArcToolbox.
4. Select the tgr09009blk00 layer from the Input Dataset Drop-Down Menu.
9. Scroll across the Attribute Table and Make Sure that the two
datasets have been joined.
4. Click Apply and note that the selection you made should be
highlighted in blue in your Map Display.
5. Close the Select by Location Dialog Box and note that your selection
will remain active.
Notice that the Export Drop-Down list has defaulted to “Selected features.” It is
the default action in ArcMap that anything you do to a layer, when you have an
active selection, only applies to the selection.
7. Check the checkbox that allows you to use the same Coordinate
System as the Data Frame.
Remember that we defined the Coordinate System as GCS North American Datum
1983? That was because the layer was created using Lat/Lon coordinates.
Lat/Lon coordinates locate features on the surface of the (roughly) spherical Earth, and are angular measurements. ArcGIS
needs a linear unit to perform many of the mathematical calculations you may want to apply to the data, such as calculating area,
distances, etc…. By using the coordinate system of the Data Frame (which is State Plane) to export the dataset, we can avoid the
added step of projecting the data to a projection with a linear measurement.
3. Name the New Field ‘UNDER18’, and Use the Type: ‘Short
Integer’.
4. Click Ok.
11. Click Ok
14. Scroll Down the Fields List and Click on the ‘AGE_UNDER5’
to Insert it in the Calculator Argument.
16. Scroll Down the Fields List and Click on the ‘AGE_5_17’ to
Insert it in the Calculator Argument.
Note that you have now created and calculated the values for two different attributes of your data. One variable, UNDER18, was
calculated from other variables in the dataset. The other, AREA, was created using the Calculate Geometry Tool, which is a new
feature in ArcMap 9.2.
Labeling Features
1. Right-Click on the Schools Layer and Open the Properties.
Adjusting Symbology
1. Click on the Symbology Tab of the Schools Layer
Properties Dialog.
5. In the Table Of
Contents Panel, Click
on the Symbol under the Railroad Layer.
11. Click on the ‘Label’ Field Header and Select “Format Labels.”
Under Rounding, Set the Number Of Decimal Places to ‘1’. Click Ok.
4. Click Open.
5. Click Ok.
7. Click Ok to Apply the Changes and Close the Properties Dialog for the Hydrography_Polygon Layer.
Note that you are now presented with the Layout Toolbar.
This toolbar is only available in Layout View. Some of the
Tools on this toolbar work in a way that is similar to the
Tools Toolbar, but with one critical difference… these tools
act on “the page” rather than the data.
Layout Page
2. Click on the Layout Zoom Tool and Drag a Box
Zoom Extent
across the top half of the Layout Display.
Layout
3. Click on the Page Extent Button to Return to the Pan
Full View of the page.
Note that these tools did not change the scale or extent of the data.
Map Title
1. On the Main Menu, Go To Insert>Title. A Highlighted
Text Box will be inserted into the Map Layout.
5. Click OK.
North Arrow
1. On the Main Menu, Go To Insert>North Arrow.
3. Click Ok.
6. Since the North Arrow is an Object, you can Access its Properties by
Right-Clicking and Selecting Properties.
Scale Bar
1. On the Main Menu, Go To Insert>Scale Bar.
2. In the Scale Bar Selector, Select the first Scale Bar in the list.
3. Click OK.
A highlighted Scale Bar will be inserted into your Map Layout (probably at
the worst possible place).
4. Use the Select Elements Tool to move the Scale Bar to the
lower left corner of the map layout.
Legend
1. On the Main Menu, Go To Insert>Legend to Open the Legend
Wizard.
6. Click Next.
8. Click Next.
Note that the text changes with the alteration of the Table of Contents Panel.
Neatline
Finally, we will insert a neatline around all of the Map Elements as a way to ‘finish’ the map, but also to control the clipping that will
occur when we export to JPEG.
5. Click Ok.
• Data Source(s)
Exporting to JPEG
1. Save your work by Clicking the Save Button.
9. Click Save.
Exporting to PDF
1. On the Main Menu, Go To File>Export Map.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Ok.
6. Click Ok.
You can now move your project by copying or zipping the C:\temp\your_initials\01-Introduction to ArcGIS\ Folder, in its
entirety, without having the problem of broken links that we experienced at the beginning of the tutorial.
• MXD Map Documents are very small! You can save many versions of a project by saving multiple Map Documents. This
allows you to save several layout versions of the same data without using a great deal of disk space.
• ArcMap supports long filenames for MXD Document, table and shapefile names. Use this to your advantage by giving
these files very specifically descriptive names. Coverage and raster filenames are limited to 13 characters.
• Congratulations! You are now ready to explore ArcMap on your own! If you are interested in additional training materials,
or just need help with a specific GIS related issue, feel free to contact us at the Yale Map Collection!