Arc Map
Starting ArcMap
Primarily ArcMap lets you explore your geographic data and create maps for display.
1. Click start menu button
2. Point to all Programs
3. Point to ArcGIS
4. Click ArcMap
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The first time you start ArcMap, the Startup dialog box appears. The Startup dialog box offers you several options
for starting your last saved ArcMap sessions. For this exercise, you need to open a blank Arc Map. So, click cancel.
For the first time you start ArcMap, like the case of ArcCatalog, it is important to make connection to the folders of
your work space. So, at the beginning you need to make connection to the drives to make sure that you can have
connection to all the folders of your hard disk.
Connecting Folders and Adding Data
1. Click on add data symbol
2. This will lead you to add data window where you will see the connect to folder symbol . Click on the
symbol and add to the drives as you did for ArcCatalog for the first exercise.
It will lead you to the following window. From the window you need to click the plus (+) sign beside my
computer which will show you the drives under my computer. Now just clicks the drives once and click OK at
the bottom right corner of the window.
Now you can get access to any folder in the respective drives you just connected through the previous way.
N.B.: To connect to the data from external drive or flash drive please keep in mind to connect to the drive
this way.
3. Now from the Add Data view or the contents view you can go to the destination folder as you do it in case
of searching anything in your computer.
Go to ENV316 and then Exercise2 folder
4. From here select all the files by keep pressing control button and single clicking left mouse button. Then
click on Add.
Now, before you start any operations in ArcCatalog make sure that all the extensions are active. Extensions help
you to access to the all kinds of analysis options. To activate the extensions click on Customize button in the menu
bar then click Extensions. Then from the extensions window check all the extensions and close the window.
To the left of the ArcMap display window is the table of contents, showing you which geographic layers are
available to display. To the right is the map display area.
Table of Map Display
Content
This particular map contains the following layers in a data frame:
Water Facilities – Water supply network of the area
Telephone Pole – Location of the telephone poles within the area
Electric Pole - Location of the electric poles within the area
Annotation - Name of important buildings and locations
Road Network – Road features
Water Body – Existing open water bodies in the area
Structures – Building footprints of the area
Moving Around the Map
The Tools toolbar lets you move around the map and query the features on the map. Place your pointer over each
icon (without clicking) to see a description of each tool.
➢ Zoom In or Zoom Out
- Click the Zoom In button on the Tools toolbar
- Move the mouse pointer over the map and click once to zoom in around a point
- Click the Zoom Out button on the Tools toolbar
- Move the mouse pointer over the map and click once to zoom out around a point
- You also can click and drag a rectangle to define the area you want to zoom in. Try it yourself.
➢ Panning
- Click the Pan button on the Tools toolbar
- Move the mouse pointer over the map and click and drag the pointer to move the map display
➢ Zoom to the full extent of data
- Click the Full Extent button on the toolbar: The map is zoomed to the full extent of all the features, which
are in the map.
- You can also zoom to full extent of a particular layer by right clicking on the layer file and clicking Zoom to
Layer.
➢ Move to the Previous Display
- When you click the Back Extent button : the previous displays are shown.
- When you click the Forward Extend button , it will move forward the display.
➢ Zoom to a Specific Map Scale
- Type the desired scale on the standard toolbar.
- In this case Type 1: 2000 and press enter
- Try to display the map in some other scales.
- After that, zoom to the full extent of the data and see that the scale in the toolbar is changing too.
➢ Creating a Book Mark
A bookmark creates a link with a particular geographic location on the map that you want to refer to later. In the
Data view, you can create bookmarks:
- Zoom or pan to display only the center part of on your map window or the part for which you want
to create a book mark
- Click the Bookmarks on the menu bar, and click Create
- In the little window that appears, type the name of the bookmark: for example: Center Part and
click OK
- After that, zoom to the full extent of the data
- To refer to the bookmark you created, click the Bookmarks menu and click the name of the
bookmark you created (Center Part). The display from which you created the bookmark will
appear.
*******Create some more Bookmarks and play with it********
➢ Removing Book Mark
If you do not want to make use of the bookmark you created, you can remove it.
- Click the Bookmarks menu, and click Manage
- In the little window, click the bookmark you want to remove.
- Click Remove.
- If you want to remove all the bookmarks, just click Remove All
Note: You can save your bookmarked location as a file in your drive to use it later with other maps. For that
just click Save button and name it as we save files in case of other kinds of software. In case you need to open
those bookmarks with other map window you will just need to click Load and point the file to load it.
Looking at the map in data view and layout view
There are 2 different ways to view your map: Data view and Layout view. Data view is used for displaying,
exploring and selecting data on your map. Layout view is used to show the map as it would be printed on a piece of
paper.
➢ Switching from Data View to Layout View
- Click the View menu on the standard toolbar
- Click the Layout View
➢ Switching back to Data View
- Click the View menu on the standard toolbar
- Click the Data View.
Note: In the layout view you can design your map and add all items to make your map complete, like a title,
legend, text, scale bars, etc. You can change the orientation of the paper to different sizes. You will learn all these
in another class where you will be taught how to make a complete map.
The Table of Contents
The table of contents provi des you with information of the content of your map and how it is represented. You
can also change the content and representation of your map by using the table of contents. The data is organized
in different layers, which contain different types of information, which can be from different datasets.
As you can see, the layers: WaterFacilities, TelephonePole, EletricPole, Annotation, RoadNetwork, Water-Body,
Structures are present in the map.
The layers are drawn on top of each other; the contents of the top layer hides the contents of the second layer, the
second layer hides the third layer, etc.
➢ Change the layer display order
- In the table of contents, click on the name of the layer Annotation and drag it to the top position in your
table of contents. (Click on the layer’s name and hold down the mouse button while moving the mouse
up).
This is done to arrange the layers of a map in such a way that no layer can obstruct the display of the other
layer(s). Try to organize yourself the layers in such way.
➢ Turning the display of a layer On/Off
- In the table of content, click on the box next to a layer’s name to uncheck it. It will turn the display of the
layer Off. The data is still available in the map, but is not shown.
- Click on the box to switch the display on again.
➢ Change the display colour/symbol of a layer
- In the table of contents, click in the box below the layer name Structures which is showing the same
colour of the structures shown in the map view. The symbol selector will be opened.
- Now you can change the colour as you want.
- Do the same for some line features (RoadNetwok) and point features (ElectricPole)
Challenge:
The symbol selector menu helps you to change the fill coulour, outline colour and width of the outline
for polygon features. It also helps to change the symbol types and colour for point and line features.
Now do it yourself changing the symbols and colurs for all the features in your table of content.
Exploring the Data in Your Map
Information about the data cannot always be explored by looking at a visible map. You need information about the
features in the map and examine the attributes of a data layer.
➢ Identify Features
- Click the identify button on the Tools toolbar
- Click the mouse pointer on the map feature you want to get information from. (e.g. click on any building)
- By default, the window shows the information, which is available in the attribute table of the top most
layer in the map.
- In the Result window, you can change the layer of which you want to get information from by clicking the
Layers dropdown arrow and select: All visible layers to get information of all layers or select a different
layer to get information from. After identifying features, close the Results window.
➢ View all the attributes of the data in a layer
- In the table of contents, right-click the name of the layer (e.g. Structures), and click Open Attribute Table.
The attribute table of the layer will be opened. As you can see, there are all the records of that particular
layer are displayed. Close the attribute table.
Have a look at the attribute tables of the other layers.
Selecting Features
Sometimes you have to make a selection of features out of a data set. You can select features in your map
interactively by clicking them in the map or by dragging a box around them. Before you select the features
interactively. You can also select features in the map by selecting their records in the attribute table.
➢ Interactive Selection
- From the main menu, click Selection, point to interactive Selection method, and then click Create new
selection.
- Click the Select Features tool.
- Click the feature you like to select.
- To select additional features, hold down the Shift key of your keyboard while clicking the features.
- If you want to deselect any selected feature just hold shift key and click on the feature.
- If you need to deselect all the selected features just click the Clear Selected Features tool on the Tools
menu
➢ Interactive Selection of Records in an Attribute Table
- In the table of contents, right-click the layer RoadNetwork and click Open Attribute table.
- Select a feature in the table by clicking at the left of the row of a record. As you can see the selection is
highlighted in the table and in the map.
- To select additional features, hold down the Ctrl key of your keyboard and at the left of the row of records
in the attribute table.
- If you want to deselect any selected feature just hold shift key and click on the feature.
- If you need to deselect all the selected features just click the Clear Selected Features tool on the Tools
menu
Saving the Map as a Document
➢ Storing Map as a New Map
- From the main menu, select File, Save as
- In the Save as window, browse to your drive and navigate to the exercise 2 data
- Remove the file name that is displayed (Untitled) and type a new name for the file.
- After that, click the Save button.
- The map is saved with a new name. See the title of the ArcMap window.
➢ Open the Previous Map
- From the main menu, select File > Open.
- Browse to your drive, navigate to the exercise 2 data and select the file Name of your file .mxd, Click Open
- You can also use the symbol to open the map.
- To open a new map window you can use the symbol
Getting Help
You can get help about the buttons and the menu commands you see on the ArcMap interface by clicking the
“What is this?” button.
- Click the “What is this?” button
- lick the buttons in ArcMap about which you want information.
- Click anywhere on the screen to close the Help window.
You can also consult the General Help topics in the Help contents. You can search the index for specific tasks
or use the “Find” tab to find topics that have specific words or phrases.
- Click the Help menu and click ArcGis Desktop Help
- Click the Contents Tab
- Double-click a chapter to see a list of topics in that category
- lick the topic you want to read.
You learned about the basics of ArcMap: How to start and open a Map, moving around the map and
explore data in the map. You changed the representation of a map. This exercise has been developed in
order to get started and do not cover all the functionalities and tools of ArcMap. The most basic functions
where treated: There is a lot more to discover!
Try to discover more about ArcMap (as much as you can) using the above listed methods to get Online
Help.
