Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Department of Urban Studies and Planning

11.520: A Workshop on Geographic Information Systems

11.188: Urban Planning and Social Science Laboratory

Lab Exercise 1:
ArcGIS Basics
In this exercise, we will use coverages of Cambridge roads and U.S. Census block group
data to explore the basic mapping capabilities of ArcGIS.

I. Setting Up a Work Environment

A. Start an ArcGIS Session
We firstly need to Log onto a PC that can run ArcGIS and access the class data lockers.

We will use a WinAthena PC such as those in MIT or in CRN facilities.

The user name and password are the same as our Athena IDs and passwords.

Step 1. Find the lab instruction on the class website.

Launch any web browser on your PC's desktop, either Mozila, the Netscape web browser,

or Internet Explore and open the page you are reading now. Keep this exercise open in a

web browser while you work. You may print a copy of this exercise if you wish, but we

recommend working directly from a browser window. If you are working in the lab of

Building 37, one of the monitor can be used to display the lab instruction. To do that, you

can grab the browser with your mouse and move to the empty screen.

Step 2. Attach 11.520 Locker

Much of our class data reside in the course locker, 11.520.

Step 3. Start ArcMap by following these steps:

1. click the Start button the left bottom corner.

2. Move the mouse over the item Programs.
3. Move the mouse over the item ArcGIS
4. Move the mouse over the item ArcMap and Click.

Please wait patiently for ArcMap to launch. The program takes awhile to come up. Notice
that in the program group of ArcGIS, there is another one called ArcCatalog, which we
will use soon.

B. ArcMap Document Setup

When ArcMap first launches, you should see an "ArcMap" window,
that prompts you to create or open a new map. Click A new empty map button to make
this window go away.
You should now be looking at an "empty" document which has "Untitled" in the title bar
that looks like the image in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The Untitled map document

This is approximately what ArcMap might look like. All of the controls are dockable.
That is, the tools panel, which has the pan and zoom tools, is free floating. You can
anchor it to the top bar of the window, if you wish, which makes it easier to find. My
version is what I have modified slightly from the base that you will see when you start
ArcMAP.
What's on the interface, besides the pan and zoom tools? Some drawing tools (see the
bottom of the window), some menus which give you access to customizing tools among
other things, and some map management tools. We will use many of these in this course.

II. Visualizing Your Data

A. Getting Data Into ArcMap
We are now ready to begin looking at data sets. You will spend most of your time in this
map document window, experimenting with good ways to symbolize a data set and
overlaying various spatial data sets to create a map. Typical spatial data sets include
ArcInfo coverages and ArcMap shapefiles.
When a data set is brought into a map document, we will call it a layer. We need a new
term because the same data set can be used to build many different layers, depending on
the symbology used and other variables.
We can add data sets to this map by clicking on the "Add Data" button
in the
toolbar. Try this now. We'll start by adding a data set of the Cambridge city boundary,
which is stored at M:\data.

Fig. 3. Add Data

Note that the dialog box for adding data begins with Catalog. Local drivers such as C and
D are registered with Catalog by default. You need to register other drives manually.
Click the "Connect to Folder" Button

In the "Connect to Folder" window, choose [M:\] then [data] from directory tree. It
contains all data sets needed for this lab.

Fig. 4. Connect data folder

Click OK and go back to the "add data" window. Now you are in the right directory, you
should be able to see a number of data sets in the window. Select the camborder data set,
which contains the border of the city of Cambridge, and then Add it.
Now, let's add another dataset, the cambrige tiger file, in an alternative way. Click the
ArcCatalog icon on ArcMap's toolbar. This starts ArcCatalog. The alternative way to
start it is to start it from the program groups. Since you have already registered drive M.
You can see it in the Catalog window. Otherwise, you need to register it by clicking the
Connect to Folder button, which is under the edit menu. You could also register the
same class data locker as: Z:\afs\athena.mit.edu\course\11\11.520\data. Browse the
folders as you do it with windows explorer and find cambtigr. To add this dataset to
ArcMap, you can grab it with your mouse and move to your ArcMap window.

Fig. 5. Adding Cambridge border coverage via drive Z:

Fig. 6. Add data from ArcCatalog

Now add the following two layers to your ArcMap, with either of the two above methods.
(Since you have already registered the M and/or Z drives, you don't need to register them
again).

cambbgrp.shp (The U.S. Census 1990 block groups in Cambridge)

sales89_shape.shp (Cambridge housing sales in 1989)

You should be able to get a map window looking like the following figure.

Fig. 7. ArcMap window with GIS layers

These four layers are currently visible. To activate a layer or deactivate it, just click on
the box next to that layer's title. If the box is checked it means that the layer is visible.
Initially, all the checkboxes are checked, and all data will be visible in the data display
area. Experiment with turning layers on and off.
Notice that some layers may obscure others. That's because the themes are drawn from
bottom to top as listed in the data frame area. You can change the drawing order of the
layers by clicking and dragging a layer in the data frame area. Try this now to see how
the display changes while you arrange the layers in different ways. But finally, they
should appear in the following order:

Sales89
Cambtigr
Cambbgrp
Camborder

Your window should now resemble the above figure. Note that since ArcMap chooses the
initial colors for themes randomly, your window will probably have different colors than
those shown here. Also, the name of the layers may also be a bit different, depends on
whether you use a coverage or a shape file.
At this point it is important to set a few properties for this document file. Select Data
Frame Properties under the View menu. The "data frame properties" window will show
up. Click "general". The window looks like the following figure.

Fig. 8. Data Frame

Property Window

Now change the name of the view from layers to Lab Exercise 1. Also notice that in
this dialog box the map units are set to meters, in which the spatial coordinates of the data
are actually stored in the files on the disk. The display units, in contrast, refer only to how
distances will be measured for display. We can set this to any units we like; we suggest
feet here because that is a familiar unit (for Americans) and is appropriate to the scale of
the map.
Now take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with some toolbar buttons. You can pan
and zoom in the view window. First, you may wish to enlarge both the ArcMap window
and the data display area so that you can see more detail in the image. Also try these
buttons out by clicking on them in the toolbar, then clicking in the data display area:
Zoom In
Zoom Out
Pan

Click to zoom in on that location. Click and drag to zoom to a particular

bounding box.
Click to zoom out centered on the location of the click.
Click and drag to pan around the map area.

Discover functions of the other buttons on the toolbar on your own. Notice that as you
move your mouse cursor over the button, a line of descriptive text will appear, which
explains the function of the button.

B. Examining Attribute Data

Click on the small boxes next to the each layers to make them invisible. Then turn on the
layer Cambbgrp in the data frame. Now you can see the outlines of Cambridge Census
block groups.
. This button is located in the toolbar. Move the
Click once on the info ("i") tool
mouse into the map window and click on a block group. The attributes associated with
that block group appear in a popup window. To see the data for all of the block groups,
move your mouse over the name of the layer in the data frame and do a right click. On
the pop-up menu, choose "open attribute table". Notice that if you click on a record in the
table, the corresponding block group is highlighted on the map.
Now we can save the map document to our working directory. Do this by clicking the
save button
. Go to your Athena locker, which is your H: driver. We suggest you
create a sub-directory called 11.520 or 11.188 within your H:\Private directory. Within
this directory, you should create another folder called lab1. Now you can save your map
document file to this directory. Give this document file whatever name you like. It does
not same all the data you are using - only the file locations, date frame properties, symbol
information and the like that are needed for ArcMAP to recreate the same state of your
work that existed when you saved the file. (Hence, the saved document file - with
an .mxd filename extension - will not work properly if the class locker is not mapped to
the same drive as it was when you saved the file.)

III. Basic Map Making

A. Simple Symbolization
Click on the check box next to the Cambtigr layer to make it visible. You should see all
Cambridge roads (plus some other features such as railroads) being drawn on the map
then. If you had moved, say, Cambgrp above Cambtigr in the legend, the
TIGER(Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system) arcs would then be
quickly covered up by the block groups. If so, you can fix this by dragging the Cambtigr
layer up above the Cambbgrp layer. Now we see TIGER arcs on top of the block groups.
The name Cambtigr may not be meaningful to everyone viewing this display. We can
easily rename the layer in the property window to something more readable. Right click
once on the word Cambtigr and select Properties from the pop up menu. Under
"General", change layer name from Cambtigr to Cambridge TIGER. Notice that the data
source (listed under "Source:") does not change. After you click the OK button, you will
see the new layer name in the data frame. You may need to need to make the data frame
window wider to see all the text. Move the mouse over the line to the right of the data
frame area. When the cursor changes to an I-beam with arrows on either side, you can
click and drag to resize the data frame area.

Fig. 9. Symbol Selector Window

For now, the layer Camborder is actually not visible even when the box is checked. To
make it visible we can drag it above the Cambridge TIGER layer. However, it obscures
the roads. Instead of moving Camborder to the bottom again, we can change the way it is
displayed so that the border is drawn but the area is not filled in. Double-click on the
legend, which is the rectangle under the layer name Camborder in the Symbol Selector
window as shown by Fig. 10, Click once on the downward arrow of the "Fill Color"
option, which is at the middle left. And then choose "No Color". This sets the fill color
of the shape to none (i.e., transparent). The fill pattern had been the colored box, meaning
that shapes should be filled with a solid color.
Also, increase the outline width from 0.40 to 2. Click "OK". Now you are able to see
clearly at the same time the boundary of the city and the block group boundaries.
Likewise, you can improve the way to visualize the tiger lines. Try that by yourself.

B. Thematic Symbolization
Your first thematic map
Double-click on Cambbgrp to open the layer property window. This time we will
manually symbolize the theme. Up to now, all the layers have used the default legend
type, "Single Symbol." Now, under "Symbology:" select "Quantities" and then
"Graduated Color." Change the classification field value to "Med_hh_inc." Notice that
ArcMap automatically divides the income data into five ranges and assigns a color to
each. These colors will not actually be shown in the map until we explicitly tell ArcMap
to do so.

Fig. 10. Symbology Window

Often we will want to make some adjustments to the way these ranges are created. To do
so, click on the Classify button. The Classification window will appear. Under
"Classification Method:" select "Quantile" and click OK.

Fig. 11. Classification Window

Back in the symbology window notice that the ranges have changed to reflect the new
classification scheme. Now click Apply to make this new scheme take effect in the map.
You've made your first thematic map, with median household income divided into 5
categories, each consisting of 20% of the block groups. If some boundaries of some block
groups are highlighted, select the feature selection tool
map area.

, and then click on the blank

Notice that the first income range is 0 - 23472. On the surface, this may seem fine, but
actually in this data set, the value zero is used to indicate that there is no data for that
block group, not that the median income is zero (which is extremely unlikely). You can
confirm that the zero value is an outlier by taking a quick look at the raw data. Close the
property window and bring forward the attribute table of Cambbrp. Right click the layer's
name in the data frame and select Open Attribute Table on the pop-up menu.
Scroll to the right in this window until you see the Med_hh_inc column. Right click on
the column heading for Med_hh_inc; it will be highlighted in reverse video when you do
so. Now sort the rows in ascending order using the Sort Ascending option
. You

should end up with a window that resembles Fig. 12. Notice that there are three
blockgroups with zero values, and the next higher value is 13009.

Fig. 12. Sorted Attributes of

Cambbgrp

We can prevent such situations from distorting our maps by specifying a "null value" in
the classification. Go back to the classification window and click on the Exclusion button.
The Data Exclusion Properties window will appear.
Specify the query as what is shown in Fig. 13. And then go to the Legend Tab. Type in
"Null Value" in the label field. Make sure the check box for Show Symbol for Excluded
Data is checked. Click OK. to close the window. Notice that all but the last of the ranges
changed; in particular, the first range is now 13009 - 25335.

Fig. 13. Exclude Non Value Records

Now we can experiment with different classification methods. Try going back to the
symbology window, click "classify" button and classifying Med_hh_inc by "Standard
Deviation" instead of "Quantile." The mean should match the mean generated under
statistics. In fact, once you become a proficient map maker, you might not use these
preset classification schemes at all. You could type your own ranges into the "Value"
field of the Legend Editor, basing your ranges on standard deviation, variance, quartiles,
quintiles, or any other defensible scheme you devise.
What are these different classification methods about? Now is good time to use the
ArcGIS online help system to get some more information. Select ArcGIS desktop help
from the Help menu. The help system may take some time to load. In the ArcGIS
Desktop Help window, click on the "Index" tab. In the keyword box, type the first few
letters of the word you're looking for, i.e. classification. You will find "schemes" in the
returned query list. Click "schemes", explanation for the classification method will show
up in the right area.

More thematic mapping

Now let's go back to the ArcMap window. Right click once on the Cambbgrp layer and
select Copy from the pop up menu. Right click on the data frame name Lab Exercise 1,
select Paste Layer from the pop up menu. Now you will have two identical Cambbgrp
layers in your data view. Rename the new layer from Cambbgrp to Households. You
can do this as by bringing up the layer property window, as indicated in the previous
section. However, you can also do it by click the layer name twice, as you change a file
name in a windows explorer. (notice that it is not a double-click.)
Now let's make a basic thematic map showing the number of households per block group.
Double-click on the new layer named Households to load the symbology window. Under
"Symbology" select "Graduated Color". Change the classification field
from Med_hh_inc to Households. Click on the Classify button to open the
Classification window. Use these options:
Type: Quantile
Number of classes: 5
Right click once on the Households layer and select Copy from the pop up menu. Right
click on the data frame name lab exercise 1 and Select Paste layer from the pop up menu.
Now we have three versions of the block groups visible in the legend. Change the name
of newest one from Households to Household Density. Double-click on the new layer to
load its property window. Change the normalization field from NONE to Landacre.
Remember to go to the classification window and change the classification method to
Quantile. The default one is Natural Breaks.
Instead of showing raw counts of households per block group, the Household Density
layer shows households per acre in each block group. The density layer normalizes the
raw counts by dividing them by the land area. Note that a density map is more
meaningful than a map of block-group counts since the counts are so sensitive to where
you draw the block group boundaries. If some block groups were divided in two, the
thematic map of counts in each block group would change a lot, but the density wouldn't
change. Use the checkboxes to toggle the visibility of the layers. Notice how different the
two maps look and understand that household density is quite different from total
households. Also understand what the normalize command did. It took the number of
households in the block group and divided it by the number of acres in the block group.
Normalization of data is an important issue that we will return to during the semester.
Make a new copy of the household density layer and change its name to Household
Density SD. Load its symbology window with a double-click on the layer name. Make
sure your classification field is "Households" and that you are normalizing by
"Landacre." Click on the "Classify..." button and choose "Standard Deviation" (accept the
defaults for the other fields). Apply your changes. This map helps us see how much
density differs across the city. We see mainly light colors (within +/- 1 standard deviation
from the mean), leading us to believe that Cambridge households are relatively evenly

spread around the city. This makes sense because there are no (or few) 40-story high
density apartment buildings, few areas with single-family homes on large lots, and few
completely nonresidential districts.
Mapping point data
So far we've only looked at polygon data. Mapping point data (often called dot density
mapping) offers new challenges and opportunities. Make the layer sales89 visible. We
see that property sales were pretty evenly spread across the city in 1989 (except in a few
block groups, most notably around MIT). Simply looking at where sales were isn't very
interesting in this case.
Load the symbology window with a double-click. Choose the "Graduated Symbol"
legend type and classify on "Realprice" and classify by "Quantile." Apply your changes.
This gives us an idea of where the high-priced sales were. Go back into the symbology
window and experiment with manually changing the colors and sizes of the dots. Also
make a copy of the theme and try mapping the data using "Graduated Color" instead of
"Graduated Symbol." Which method do you think is better?

IV. Getting Your Work on Paper

Configure your data display window to show Income shaded thematically, Cambridge
TIGER, sales89, and Camborder. Turn off all other layers. Now you are ready to make a
map. Under the View menu select Layout View. You get a default map layout in the data
display area. We've worked with data layers in the data view, and now we are working
with a layout document. Although we can print a map directly (using the Print command
under the File menu), it is impossible to control exactly how it will look on the page
without using a layout. Besides the GIS layers, a layout usually also include a title,
legend, scale bar and north arrow. These are the most basic components of a map.
This default map layout has no title, scale bar or legend. You can either insert these
components one by one or apply a template. Let's first apply a template. Click the last
button on the layout tool bar, which is "change layout".

Fig. 14. Layout Tool bar

Select "LetterLandscape.mxt" under General tab and click "finish" button.

Fig. 15. Applying a map Template

This template adds legend, North arrow and scale bar to the map layout. But the map title
is still empty.

Fig. 16. Map Layout After Applying a Template

To add the title, double click on <Double click here to enter the title>. In the text box
of the property window, type in Lab Exercise 1.
Additionally, we need to add a few more elements to the map:

the sources of the data

subtitles
your name
today's date

Let's add the data source first. Click Text under the Insert menu. A small text box shows
up in the middle of the map. Double click the text box to bring up the property window.
In the Properties dialog box that comes up, type:
Sources:
U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990
Banker and Tradesman Real Estate Transfer Database, 1987-1989

Note that you can use the <Enter> key to insert line breaks in the text. Once you click
OK, the text is placed wherever you clicked in the layout window. You can move this text
by dragging it with the mouse. You can double click on the text, bring up the property
window and change the font and size until you are satisfied.
In the same way, we can add two subtitles. Underneath the title Lab Exercise 1 add two
subtitles in smaller text that read "Median Household Income in Cambridge, MA in
1990" and "Housing Sales in Cambridge, MA in 1989." Also add your name and today's
date somewhere on the map.
Feel free to move and resize the elements to make your map look more attractive. You
can also go back to the symbology window to adjust the existing symbology. Once you
change the symbology, the change will be applied to the map layout automatically. You
don't need to create the layout again. Try your best to make the map readable and
attractive. Although it is hard to make a real attractive one this time, we expect your map
should be much better than than Fig. 16.
Before you print out the map, make sure that none of the visible features in your map are
selected -- these will show up highlighted in yellow on the map. If they are, they will also
show up highlighted on your printout, which you probably don't want. .
Now you can print with confidence. Select Print from the File menu. Click Setup button
and select the name of the printer in the room where you are doing the lab and click the
OK button. Make sure your printout actually shows up! Getting acceptable paper output
isn't always as easy as you'd think. You can't be sure it will work until you have the piece
of paper in your hands. Make sure to turn your printout in.
Printing Notes
When printing directly to a printer, make sure to select the correct printer. When saving
your maps to a file for later printing or use in a graphics or paint package, click on the
"Print to File" option to save the file to disk in EPS format for printing or export later.
Make sure this filename ends with .eps or .ps.

V. Save Your Work

Remember to save your work again by clicking the disk icon. ArcGIS can save the status
of your session in the map document file, which typically has a .mxd extension. The map
document file does not contain the data sets itself, but rather stores pointers to their
locations. Your thematic map properties and layouts are also stored in the document file.
After you have done more work on a map document that you previously saved, you could
save your changes under a different name by using Save As instead. Try this now, saving
a copy of your map document as lab_1copy.mxd. Saving variations of your map
documents under different filenames is a good practice. The map document files

themselves are typically not too large, so you making lots of map document files should
not waste too much disk space.
Next time, when you reopen the map document file with ArcMap, it should look just the
same as when you saved it this time. You can try it now if you have additional time.

VI. If You Finish Early

If you finish the lab assignment with time to spare, you may want to return to this layout
window and experiment with the other templates and various styles of the map
components.
Checking out more of the ArcGIS online help (started from the Help menu) is also a
good idea. Throughout the class we will expect you to try to answer your own questions
about ArcGIS by consulting the online help and the class notes before asking the class
staff. Of course, if you get stuck, we are here to help.

VII. Lab Assignment

Turn in the printout of the layout you produced to your instructor. The lab assignment is
due by the START of class in Lecture 3.