Introduction To ArcMap
Introduction To ArcMap
Table of Contents
Introduction
Topics
What is ArcMap, open an existing map, explore a Map Document,
data and layout view, Arctoolbox, select features, symbolize data,create
data and getting help.
Introduction
ArcMap is ArcGIS’s desktop application for all map-based tasks, like data
and map analysis, editing and production of maps. In ArcMap, a user can
display data, make selections, analyse data, manipulate data, create data,
assign symbols and produce maps. ArcMap also serves as gateway to a
number of software extensions that perform specific tasks and analyses
(extensions will be discussed later in the course).
Map Window
Table of Contents
The large window that currently displays the simplified map of the province of
Overijssel is called the Map Window (Fig. 2.1). Any geographic representation
of your data will be displayed in the Map Window. You can change its size by
clicking and dragging the border between the Table of Contents (see next
section) and the Map Window.
The smaller window on the left side is the Table of Contents (Fig. 2.1). It
shows:
• The geodata sets that loaded in your Map Document. In the Table of
Contents, data are organised in layers. Generally, layers represent a
particular type of data, such as lakes, districts, roads etc. The check
box next to each layer indicates whether or not a layer is represented
in the map. If the box is checked, the layer is visible; if un-checked,
the layer is hidden.
• The legend used to display the features of a layer in the map.You can
change the size of the Table of Contents window by clicking and
dragging the border between the Table of Contents and the Map
Window.
! You can arrange the way toolbars are displayed in ArcMap: let them “float” as
independent small windows, or anchor them to ArcMap’s main window.
There are various ways to change to view on the area displayed in the Map
Window. For instance, you can zoom, pan, or display the map at a specific
scale:
Zoom in or out
• Locate and click the Zoom Out button on the Tools toolbar
• Move the mouse pointer over the map and click once. The map will
be redisplayed at a smaller scale centred around the point where
you clicked.
• Now select the Zoom In button in the Tools toolbar
• Move the mouse pointer over the map and click once to zoom-in
around a selected point.
• You can also click and drag a rectangle to define the area you
want to zoom to. Try this other method also.
• The scroll wheel of the mouse can also be used for zooming.
Panning
The Back Extent button allows you to move back to your previous
zoom settings. You can move forward again using the Forward Extend
button
• If finished, zoom to Full Extent. Notice that the value in the Map
Scale tool also changes.
There are two ways to view a map: in Data view and in Layout view.
� Data view is used to display, explore, select and analyse data. You will
use this view most of the time to analyse or model your data in ArcMap.
� Layout view is used to prepare the final layout of a map for dissemination
or printing. The size of the page can be specified in the page set-up.
You can add all the items that complete your map (like title, legend, text,
scale bars, north arrow etc.), colour the background and move the items
around to design a balanced layout.
� Note that you can always switch back to Data View, using the
Data View option.
In the Layout View, the orientation of the page is by default ‘Portrait’. Youcan
change the orientation as well as other characteristics of the page.
! Although the page has switched to landscape, you still have a “portrait”
box
around your map. The box represents the Data Frame, the area of your
sheet that is reserved to display map elements. You can select the Data
Frame box, resize it and move it anywhere you like on the page. Remember
that the Layout View displays your map exactly how it would appear on paper
when printed. If you resize and/or move the Data Frame, leave enough
space on the page for elements like the title, legend, scalebar, north
arrow,etc).
• Open the View menu and click Data View (or click on the DataView
button in the toolbar at the bottom of the Map Window).
The Table of Contents provides information on the content of your map and
the symbols used to represent it. The Table of Contents also enables you to
change content and representation of your map. You have seen that the
data is organized in layers: the current map has 6 layers: villages, roads, major
cities, lakes, land, municipalities.
Most of the options that you see will be introduced later in the course.
Layers are drawn on top of each other. The sequence is defined by the order
of layers in the Table of Contents: starting from the layer at the bottom and
ending with the layer at the top. Layers that are drawn later may hide features
of previously drawn layers. It may be necessary to re-arrange the sequence
of layers to see all the features that you want in your map.
The Land layer now hides all other layers, because it is now drawn on top of
the others.
• Drag the Land layer to its original position between Lakes and
Municipalities.
! To display all the layers of a data set effectively, use the following order
(from top to bottom): points, lines, areas.
Turn on/off the visualization of a layer
• In the table of content, click in the box next to a layer’s name to
uncheck it.
The data is still available, but not shown in the display.
• Click the checkbox to switch the visualization of the layer back
on.
• Switch off the visualization of the Land layer and make sure that
the visualization of the Municipalities layer is switched on.
You see that the Municipalities layer was hidden by the Land layer.
The data cannot always be explored simply by looking at a map. If you need
information about specific features, examine the attributes of a layer.
Identify features
By default, the Identify Results window displays the information derived from
the attribute table of the top layer in the map. If you click on a road in the
lake, you will get information about the road, not about the lake, because the
Road layer is placed on top of the Lakes layer.
• In the Identify Results window, you can change the layer to get
information from by clicking the Layers dropdown arrow and se
lecting: Visible layers to get information of all visible layers, or
select a specific layer to get information from. Try this.
A data frame in ArcMap contains one or more layers; it defines the geographic
extent, coordinate system and other display properties of the layers
in Arc Map. You can see the name of a data frame displayed at the top in the
table of contents. By default, when a map is created, the data frame is called
“Layers”, but it can be changed.
Data is represented in at least one data frame, or in more than one data
frame; you can add data frames to a map, each containing its own set of
layers. In the Data View, you can only display one data frame at the time. In
the Layout view, however, you can place different data frames at different
positions next to each other on a page.
Interactive selection
• Click on the feature that you want to select in the map. Notice
that you can only select from Major cities. A feature’s outline
turns to light blue when it is selected.
Deselecting features
• To deselect all features at once from all layers that have an active
selection, you can use the Clear Selected Features option in
the Selection menu.
• Click the method drop down arrow and click Create a new selection.
• Click apply
• The selected city will be shown in the map and the attribute table.
• Close the Select by attributes window, close the attribute tableand
de-select the selected feature.
2.2.6 ArcToolbox
ArcToolbox is an integrated part of ArcMap and ArcCatalog. You can open
the toolboxes like you open a menu. Toolboxes help you to run all kinds of
operations on your data, as you will see in this exercise. The functionality of
toolboxes goes beyond the functionality of menus, toolboxes:
• give you access to all operations that you can perform in ArcGIS
• enable you to add by yourself
button.
• Click on the + sign in front of the ‘Fields’ toolset to see the tools
Using a tool
To use a tool, double click it (or right click on the tool to open the context
menu, then select open). A dialog window will open, where you can enter all
necessary information to run the tool.
• Click OK
Finding tools
• The ‘Favorites’ tab contains all the tools that are available to you.
• The ‘index’ tab allows you to see the tools in alphabetical order and to
find tools.
• The “Search” tab has even more search possibilities. It allows you to
type in a keyword or a partial name.
Fig 2.4: Tabs on the
toolbox
window
• Type the keywords: “Create Per….”, to locate the tool that you
have used in the previous task.
• Select the tool and click the ‘Locate’ button. This will bring you
to exact location of this tool.
• Save the map (file / save) and quit Arcmap (file / exit)
•
! Note that a saved Map Document does not store the spatial data displayed
in it, but only the references to these data! If you rename a dataset, or
change the location where it is stored, then the Map Document will not be
able to locate the data anymore. The layer will appear in the table of content
with an exclamation mark, but it will not be drawn until you have
manually located the source data. To prevent this, you can store relative
path names (path names without a drive) to data layers (see: File-
Properties-Data source option-Store relative path names). Then you can
copy a folder containing a Map document and its data files to a different drive
without loosing the link between the Map document and the data files.
2.3 Create a new map document
from existing data
Data that you can display in a map may come in a variety of formats: vector,
raster or tabular data. If the format is supported by ArcMap, you can add the
data as a layer to ArcMap. If the format is not supported, you have to convert
the data to a format that is supported by ArcMap, e.g. by using the data
conversion utilities in ArcToolbox, or other data conversion programs. Data
conversion,
however, is beyond the scope of these introductory exercises.
Start ArcMap, create a new map and add data to the map:
• Start ArcMap.
• Add more layers: click the Add Data button, navigate to the same
folder. Press and hold down the Control button on your keyboard
while you click the layers: Lakes.shp; major cities.shp; roads.shp;
municipalities.shp and villages.shp.
! If ArcCatalog is opened, you also can add data by dragging the data layer
from ArcCatalog to the map display window of ArcMap
Removing a data layer from your map:
• Change the display order of one ore more layers in the table of
contents until they are all in a correct position. Click the layer that
you want to move, keep the mouse button down and drag the layer
to a new position.
• Save the map with a new name on your personal drive.
• In the symbol selector box, select a symbol from the big window to
show the villages. You can also change some properties of the
symbol, like colour and size. Try some possibilities.
• After you created your symbol, click Apply. The symbols of the
villages in the table of contents and in the map are changed
according your specifications.
The option ‘single symbol’ displays all features is a map with the same symbol.
E.g. if a single symbol is used for roads, the difference between highways
and main roads will not be visible in the map. These unique values can
be symbolized separately. Unique values of records in a layer can be found
in the layer’s attribute table.
• Method: Label all features in the same way. Label field: select the
attribute field that you can use for the names of the cities. Select
“Name”
• Click OK. The labels of the city names will appear in your map.
• Define the page set up: File, Page and print set up. From the Page
size, select a landscape orientation
• In the layout view, resize / move the data frame (the box around
the map) so that the map fits onto the page.
• In the main window, click Insert Title. Click and type a map title in
the Title box that will appear in your layout. (e.g: Map of india).
Then press the Enter key on your keyboard. Next, click the title
and drag it to an appropriate position on your map.
To learn more about the Symbolization, refer to the Help menu: Help
contents, ArcMap, Symbolizing your data.
To learn more about map creation, refer to the Help menu: Help contents,
ArcMap, Creating Maps.
ArcMap provides several ways to help you figure out how to best take
advantage of the many functions available.
• Move the mouse pointer over the buttons in the toolbars. Again, the
Status bar displays a brief description.
Use “What’s this?” help. The “What’s this?” button provides a quick
way to access basic information about buttons, commands, and menu options.
Directly from the Help menu, you can access a number of web sites which may
help you understand the basics of GIS and of ArcMap.
2.5 Challenges
Challenge 1:
Try to discover more about ArcMap (as much as you can) using the above
listed methods to get Online Help.
Create new data files and display the data in ArcMap. You can create new
shape files. Other data formats that can be created are feature classes in a
Personal Geodatabases (These data formats will be treated in a later exercise).
You can add the contents of the created data files to ArcMap.
• Start ArcMap and select a new empty map, or, if ArcMap is still
running, select: File, New, from the main menu and select a new
blank map document.
• Make sure that the current view is Data view
• Click the Add layers button
• In the Add Data window, browse to your folder where the newly
created files are located and Add the three shape files to your map.
•
You see the three shape files in the table of contents without data.
Draw polygons in the Polygon shape file:To create or modify data in ArcMap,
you have to switch on the Editor:
! You saved the data in the Polygons shape file, which is located on your
Personal drive. This data file can be added (linked) to any map in ArcMap.
Create some lines in the Lines shape file:
• In the editor, select a task from the Task dropdown arrow: Create
New Feature
• Select the target layer in which to create the new features: Lines�
Click the Sketch button
• Move the mouse pointer to the map area and click to start drawing
the line. Move the mouse pointer to next vertex of your line and
click. To finish the line, you have to double-click.
• Make a few more lines.
• After making the lines, you have to save them in the Lines file:
Click Editor, Save Edits
• Select a task from the Task dropdown arrow: Create New Feature
• Select the target layer in which to create the new features:Points
• Click the Sketch button
• Move the mouse pointer to the map area and click to place a point.
• Make a few more points.
• After making the points, you have to save them in the Points file:
Click Editor, Save Edits
• To stop adding features, you have to switch off the editor: Editor,
Stop Editing.
In practice, new data will be created in ArcMap by digitizing paper maps with
a digitizing tablet, or “on screen” to trace the features from a geo-referenced
aerial photograph or raster image of a map.
It is possible to add new fields to the attribute tables and fill in the records for
each field to add attributes for each feature.
2.6 Summary
In this exercise you have learned the basics of ArcMap: how to start the
application and open a Map Document, how to move around the map and
explore your data, how to define basic symbology for your map. At the end,
you
have learned where to find additional help, if required. In the challenges you
can learn more about ArcGis Help functions and how to create data files.
Remember that the goal of this exercise is to get you started and not to
cover all the functionalities and tools of ArcMap.