Intro To ARC GIS
Intro To ARC GIS
Data for this exercise are located in the L1 subdirectory or the class web page.
Videos for this exercise are located in the class web page.
What You’ll Produce: Four maps, one of lakes and roads, one of wetlands, a
third map of the Cloquet Forestry Center, and a fourth a map of topological
errors.
Undergraduates:
http://giscourses.cfans.umn.edu/fnrm3131
or
Graduate students:
http://giscourses.cfans.umn.edu/fnrm5131
If you wish refer to the video Start ArcMap on the class web page.
Each lab assumes you have a copy of the needed data files on your personal
“jump” drive. Before each lab download needed files from the class web sites.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
Part 1: Starting ArcGIS, adding data and creating your first map
First, find the ArcMap icon, shown to the right. The icon is often located
1) as a desktop or taskbar shortcut,
or
2) in an ArcGIS folder
In Windows XP it may often by found by left clicking on the Start button in the
lower left of the screen and selecting Programs ArcGIS ArcMap.
Now single left click on the OK button in the lower right corner of the popup
window.
You will see a dialog box to select a layer or layers for the map.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
Left click on the zoom and pan icons to change cursor function. Left clicking
on the plus (+) magnifying glass changes it to a “zoom in” cursor, then click
on the data pane will zoom in on a point. You can also left click and
hold/drag to define a zoom area.
The minus cursor zooms out, and the “arrows in” and “arrows out” buttons, found
below the magnifying glass buttons, zoom the entire pane by a fixed amount.
Next there is a “pan” button, a hand, that does not change the magnification, but
allows you to click/drag position the data. There is also a globe zoom button that
zooms to the full “Extent” of your data. Below this are “arrows in” and “arrows
out” buttons to zoom by fixed amounts, and buttons that zooms back and forth
among previous zoom levels.
To exit the pan or zoom cursors, click on the arrow button near the cluster of
the pan and zoom tools.
The Symbol
Selector window will
appear (left).
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
Left click on the blue patch (shown highlighted in the figure on previous page), or
another that suits your fancy, and left click on the OK near the lower right.
You left click to switch between the Data View (icon near the lower left of the
Data Pane, shown by the left arrow above) and the Layout View (icon, right
arrow).
Note that second set of zoom tools that appear when we activate the Layout
View (see below). These allow you to
control the zoom and pan within the
layout view, without changing the
zoom in the data view.
Type in something logical; for example “Lakes and Roads in Hugo, Minnesota”.
After you have typed in your title, left click and hold over the title, and drag the
mouse to reposition it.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
Return to the Insert Menu (as you did with the title) to
add a North Arrow.
Use the Insert Menu to add a Scale Bar. Detailed instructions aren’t provided,
but the sequence is similar to adding a north arrow.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
Switch to the data view (click the map icon in the lower left of the data pane)
Left click on the layer name “Lakes” in the table of contents, and a dark blue box
should appear. Right click on the blue box.
Select the tab labeled “General” and change the layer name
from “Lakes” to “Hugo Lakes” and click OK.
Notice the layer names in the legend change “on the fly”, as
you change them in the Table of Contents, they are changed
on your layout.
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This will
open an export window (right).
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
You’re usually best served when saving the map in the lesson directory that
contains the associated data files, in this case, our
L1 directory. The map is saved with the file
extension .mxd.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
In this case the path is “hard-wired” to the data set, and the
ArcMap project you’ve created knows to look there when you
ask it to display this map.
This isn’t a problem if you always work on a computer with fixed drives, and you
never change the subdirectories. But many folks want to move their data and
projects around.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
A second, more confusing aspect of map project files is that they do not contain
any spatial data. This can cause problems if you are not careful.
For example, if I save the “map” I created above into the file “MyFirstMap.mxd”
on a portable disk drive and move it to a different computer, opening
MyFirstMap.mxd will show my data sets in a table of contents, but my data view
and layout view will be empty.
This is because the file MyFirstMap.mxd doesn’t hold the data. It only holds the
instructions on where to find the data, and what symbols to use when displaying
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
the data, among other information. If I haven’t also moved my data to the new
computer, then there will be nothing for the map project file to display.
Think of the .mxd file as the recipe, and the data as the ingredients. You need
both to make a map. If you save the .mxd in the same directory as the data, then
you can easily move both the .mxd map project and the data the same time.
You should follow this two-step process for all class exercises, saving data
onto your portable thumb drive, and saving the .mxd with relative paths,
into the same subdirectory as the data.
Manipulating Symbology
Remove the roads layer (right click on the name in the TOC, then left click on
Remove), and add the layer “wet_land.shp” from the L1 subdirectory. This layer
shows polygons that depict the wetlands of the Hugo USGS quadrangle, in
Minnesota.
After adding the data, left click on the name of the layer (wet_lands.shp) and right
click to select Properties.
This opens a Layer Properties window, with several actions you can begin by
activating tabs along the top of the
window (see the graphic a few
pages above).
2) Select Wetland_ty using the down arrow next to the Value Field.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
3) Click on the Add All Values. All the wetland types will now be shown.
Uncheck the box to the left of the “all other values”.
4) Change the color scheme for the map to colors you prefer.
Since the U value (which means Uplands) is such a large part of the map let’s
make it blank to make the map more readable.
Left click twice quickly on the colored box to the left of the U value.
Left-click Hollow from the symbol selector window and then OK.
As before, switch to the Print Layout View and add a Title, Legend, Scale Bar,
North Arrow and your name/date. Practice selecting the map, title, legend and
resizing each item. Move these
objects around into a pleasing
arrangement. Your map should look
similar to the image at the right/below.
Export this map to a PDF.
Data Frames
When you first started ArcGIS, it automatically created a working area, called a
“Data Frame.” It named this first working area “Layers,” as
shown by the yellow stack in the table of contents. It is perhaps
easiest to think of this data frame as analogous to a desktop,
onto which you place data layers. Just as you may have several desks in a room,
you may have several data frames in an ArcMap project.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
To carry this analogy further, you may place different data on each “desktop”
represented by each data frame. You may also display a different area, use
different symbology, and different coordinate systems for each “desktop”, or data
frame.
A map may have several DATA FRAMES. When you add data layers to a map
the data will be placed in the “active” frame; by default this is active frame is
called “Layers”. This exercise will only use the default DATA FRAME called
“Layers”.
To leave the data frame properties window, left click on the OK.
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40_corners,
Cl_roads (NOTE: “CL_ROADS” NOT “ROADS”)
Streams
Iverson_drg
Left click on the Iverson_drg layer and hold the mouse button down.
While holding down the mouse button, drag the layer toward the top of the stack.
As you do a black line will show the new position in the layer stack. Move this
layer to the top of the stack and release the button, dropping the layer.
The rearranged layers now look different because the Iverson_drg covers up the
other three layers.
Pan, zoom, re-arrange layers, and apply symbology until your map appears
similar to the image on below.
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Use the measure tool to estimate the distance between the gravel pit and the
lookout tower (left click, hold, drag, and release).
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-left clicking on the triangle near the upper middle of the Measure window
-left clicking on Distance
-selecting the desired units
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Create your map similar to the figure below, with a title, name, legend, north
arrow, and scale.
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Each data frame specifies a different map, with its own data layers, coverage,
and coordinate system, and other map properties
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Right click over the data frame named “Layers” in the table of contents
From the drop-down menu, select Properties (at the very bottom, just below
Activate)
Select the New Data Frame then right click and Activate this data frame.
Load the vegetation, cl_roads, and streams data layers in this new data frame,
and rename the frame as “Main Panel.”
Activate the layout view, set the page to landscape (File -> Page and Print
Setup…), and left click on one of the data frame panes to activate it. Use the
blue edge “handles” to resize it so you have an inset and main panel to create an
inset map, similar to that shown below.
Note that you don’t need to print this map, but you should understand the
process, as
next week and
in future labs
you’ll have to
produce multi-
panel map.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
Part 2: GeoDatabases
You may wonder about the data layers you have just used for your two maps,
Lakes, Roads, and wet_land. These layers are shapefiles, a special file type
defined by ESRI for storing spatial data. Shapefiles are a group of files that
share a file name but have different extensions, such as .shp or .dbf or .prj.
You typically create the GeoDatabases (or the simpler/older shapefiles) by left-
clicking on the catalog tool:
You may right-click on a folder in the directory tree, then scroll down to New,
Personal GeoDatabase (see
figure) to create a new
geodatabase.
You will now create files to hold data layers, data tables, or other information.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
You may create a new feature dataset, feature class, or table by selecting File >
New, then the GeoDatabase item you’d like to create. You’ll be prompted by a
series of menus asking you to
specify the characteristics of the
item.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
You’ve just created an empty feature dataset. I find the description confusing,
because it doesn’t contain any data yet. You have to put what ESRI has called
feature classes (which will contain data) within this feature dataset.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
Click Finished.
Topologies in GeoDatabases
Open a new project (Blank Map), and display the following layers found in the
L1\Example_topology GeoDatabase, in the testdata feature dataset:
-point_layerX
-line_layerC
-line_layerD
-layerA
-layerB
These are very simple data layers that we’ll use to introduce vector topology.
Clicking on objects with the selection tool will show a cyan outline of the
features. Note that as you alternately click on polygons, you can see how
features overlap.
2) Now use the Add Data button, add the Example Topology Database, testdata,
testdata_topology. Answer no to the question about adding the participating
data sets, you’ve already added them.
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GIS Fundamentals: Supplementary Lessons with ArcGIS Introduction to ArcGIS
4) Create a layout of
the data and
topological errors,
with an appropriate
legend and name,
scale bar, north
arrow, export this to
a pdf, and turn it in.
The data view will
look something like
the figure right:
To Turn In (via
Moodle)
Remember, you have four maps to turn in:
1) The lakes and roads map,
2) The wetlands map, and
3) The Cloquet Forestry Center Map.
4) The topology/errors example map.
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