Contents

• Brief Overview of ArcView
• Goals of the Exercise
• Computer and Data Requirements
• Procedure
  1. Creating Geodatabases, Feature Datasets, and Feature Classes
  2. Displaying Spatial Datasets in a Map
  3. Accessing Attribute Data
  4. Selecting Objects of a Geodatabase Table
  5. Making a Chart
  6. Consolidating Your Results for Presentation
  7. Do Something Creative

Brief Overview of ArcInfo 8.0

Goals of the Exercise

Computer and Data Requirements

You will be working with the following spatial datasets during this exercise:

1. A polygon shapefile of the counties of Texas, called Counties
2. A point shapefile of pan evaporation stations, called Evap

Procedure

1. Creating Geodatabases, Feature Datasets, and Feature Classes

A feature dataset is a collection of feature classes that share the same spatial reference.  The spatial reference describes both the projection and spatial domain extent for a feature class in the geodatabase. Because the feature classes in a feature dataset share the same spatial reference, they can participate in topological relationships with each other such as in a geometric network. These topological relationships can also be stored in the feature dataset. Note that feature classes in a geodatabase can exist as stand-alone feature classes, without being part of any feature dataset.

Create a new GeoDatabase

(1) Open ArcCatalog

(2) on the left panel, search for the folder where you want to create your geodatabase, right click on the folder name or icon, select New/Personal Geodatabase, a new geodatabase -- called New Personal Geodatabase.mdb and represented by an icon with the shape of a cylinder -- will be created,

and (3) overwrite the name of the geodatabase with Ex1Data (the geodatabase will keep its file extension mdb regardless of whether you included it in the name or not).

Adding Data to the Geodatabase

To add data to the Ex1Data geodatabase within a feature dataset, in ArcCatalog: right-click on the name or icon of Ex1Data, select Import/Shapefile to Geodatabase wizard, browse for the shapefile Counties and click Open, Click Next to get the destination screen.  Select the Create a new output feature dataset radial button, call the new feature dataset Texas, and the new feature class Counties,

 and click Next, accept the default parameters and click Next, (6) click Finish and a Texas feature dataset with a Counties feature class will be created.  You may notice that there is a message "Coordinate System: Unknown" during this process, since we have not defined the coordinate system of this dataset.   Repeat the process for the shapefile Evap, but in this case, select the  Choose an existing output feature dataset radial button, call the existing feature dataset Texas, and the new feature class Evap, and click Next. The shapefiles Counties and Evap have been added to the Texas feature dataset as feature classes.

After creating the geodatabase, the feature dataset and the feature classes, the ArcCatalog tree looks like this:

Note that the feature classes Counties and Evap could have been created outside the feature dataset Texas, but since they share the same spatial reference, it was decided to group them together within the feature dataset. Trying to import spatial data to an existing feature dataset, may cause a conflict between different spatial reference frames. This is very likely to occur when attempting to import data to an empty feature dataset created without defining its spatial reference.  You will learn more about spatial reference frames in subsequent exercises.   For the moment, we'll just proceed without formally defining a spatial reference frame for the data.

In ArcCatalog, you can toggle the right panel display between a file tree (Contents tab), a data view (Preview tab), and a metadata document (Metadata tab). Here is an example of Preview of the Geography of the Counties feature class:

The preview option allows one to display the feature class table as well, by selecting Table instead of geography at the bottom of the panel.

2. Displaying Spatial Datasets in a Map

Browse to the feature dataset Texas, and click Add. This has the effect of adding all the feature classes in the feature dataset to the ArcMap display.  You can add individual feature classes within the Texas feature dataset if you so desire, by clicking on the feature dataset icon, and then on the icons of one or more of the feature classes (Hold down Ctrl to select more than one feature class).

In ArcMap, a layer consists of a reference to a spatial dataset (such as a feature class, shapefile or coverage) and a definition of how to display it (legend colors, line thickness, etc.), and a map is a graphical representation of geographic information. The left panel in the ArcMap window is the Table of contents, and the right panel is the Display window. The Table of contents lists layers, and the Display window displays maps.   Note that the Table of contents lists the layers corresponding to the two feature classes of the Texas feature dataset that you just added, while the Display window displays the map with the corresponding spatial data (i.e., Texas counties and evaporation stations).

Save your work in ArcMap by choosing File/Save and, after navigating to your working directory, writing the file name Ex1 (the file will be assigned the extension mxd).

To modify the display of the Counties layer in the map: right click on the layer name, select properties,

select the Symbology tab, click on the symbol color box, make your selections for the Fill Color and the Outline Color, and click OK, twice. You can also access the Symbology menu just by double clicking on the Symbol displayed in the ArcMap Layer Table of Contents.  Follow this procedure to modify the display of the Evap layer. Hopefully, the new map looks better than the original one.

3. Accessing and Querying Attribute Data

click on the location on the map you are interested in, and in the Identify Results window, select the object you are interested in. In the figure, attribute data for the Austin Airport  evaporation station and Travis county has been retrieved

If you inadvertantly close the Tools menu you just used, you can open it again from the View menu:

 

Viewing an Attribute Table

To access attribute data of a entire layer, in ArcMap: right click on the Evap layer name in the table of contents, and select Open Attribute Table:

Tables that contain attribute data of a layer are always called Attributes of <layer name>, and contain a field called Shape. The field Shape displays the words Point, Line or Polygon, but it really stores a geometric object with the shape of a point, line or polygon.

Note that record number 44 (indicated by the arrow in the table) corresponds to Austin evaporation station. All attribute data is the same as retrieved before, except for the Shape field, but that does not mean that the tables stores information different from what can be retrieved with the Identify Features tool.    You can see from the blue dot on the map, the geographic location of the Austin Airport where these pan evaporation data were measured.   To Clear a Selected feature and select a new one, use: Selection/Clear Selected Features in the ArcMap toolbar:

4. Selecting Objects of a Geodatabase Table (points, lines and polygons)

To select an object from the map, in ArcMap: in the table of contents, click on the layer name Counties, click on the Select Features tool, in the display window,

click on the Counties polygons you want to select. To select more than one object, press the Shift key and hold it down while you click on the additional objects. Selected objects are displayed with a light blue outline, although the color might change depending on your settings. The corresponding attribute table records have also been selected. You can verify this by opening the Counties attribute table.

To clear your selection, right click on the layer name, and choose Selection/Clear Selected Features.

To select an object from the attribute table, in ArcMap: (1) in the table of contents, click on the layer name Counties, (2) select Open Attribute Table, (3) in the Attribute Table, click on the square at the left of the records you want to select. To select more than one record, press the Ctrl key and hold it down while you click on the additional records. Selected records are displayed with a light blue background, although the color might change depending on your settings. The corresponding objects in the map have also been selected. You can verify this by returning to the map window.

To clear your selection, click on the Options button of the attribute table window, and choose Clear Selection.

5. Making a Chart

6. Consolidating Your Results for Presentation

Reduce the size of the data frame (i.e., rectangle where the spatial data is contained) -- to make room for the graph -- by clicking on the graph and moving its handlers.   You can copy your chart from Excel to ArcMap, simply by clicking on the chart in Excel, Copying it and then using Edit/Paste in ArcMap to drop the chart into your layout.   Very cool!!  Move and resize the graph as necessary.   You can draw lines to related the location of the measurement stations and the data plotted on the graph using the Draw a Line tool at the bottom of the ArcMap toolbar.   Or you can add text with the text tool shown next to the line draw tool.   You can also insert a North Arrow by using the Insert menu in ArcMap.

Your final map could look like this:

You can print this map directly from ArcMap, or you can copy it into Word and print it from there.   To copy a map into Word, Right Click on the map in the ArcMap Layout, and you'll see an option Copy Map to Clipboard.   When you open Word, use the option Edit/Paste Special and you'll get a Window that allows for an ESRI ArcMap Document Object.   If you hit OK here, then your map will paste right into Word as it looks in ArcMap!

Here's another option: suppose you want to take a chart in Excel and add a map to the Chart to show where the data apply.   If you Copy the Map to the Clipboard in ArcMap, you can Paste it in Excel and annotation to connect the map to the Charted data:

The manipulations just described transfer objects from one application to another.   A more general procedure is to simply copy the screen to the clipboard and cut out the part that you want, saving it to a file for later use.   That is how all the images in this exercise were prepared.  To copy any image, hit Shift/Prinscreen on your keyboard (this copies the Screen onto the Clipboard).   From the Start Menu in Windows, Open Accessories/Paint.

Use Edit/Paste to paste the contents of the Clipboard into Paint.  You'll now see an image of all the things on your original computer screen.  Click on the open box under Edit so that the cursor becomes a cross and use it to draw a dashed box around the portion of the image that you want to keep.

Use Edit/Copy To to save the file as a .bmp bitmap file.   Then in Word, you can use Insert/Picture/From File to insert the .bmp file into Word.   Note that in ArcMap you can use Insert/Picture to similarly insert pictures into your maps!!  Very cool!

7. Do Something Creative

To Be Turned In:  A completed map and chart of selected data.