Introduction to Geographic Information Systems Spring 2016

Exercise 2 – Introduction to ArcGIS 10 Projects

This exercise will introduce you to the common set-up functions of the ESRI ArcGIS software package.

Specifically, this exercise will provide instruction on:

• Starting a Project • Identifying the component parts to the software package • Saving your Project and setting up your Project Workspace • Setting your Map Document Properties • Migrating data to your Workspace • Setting your Data Frame Properties • Connecting your Project to your Workspace, and • Adding data to your project and displaying in the Data Frame

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Good things to know before starting…

ArcGIS is packed with functions and tools. It takes years of working with the software package to learn and master most of these functions. One thing that we can rely on when we come to those times during a project when we don’t know what to do is to refer to the excellent ArcGIS Resource Center. There you can access the online Help section (extremely useful!), a Blog section where you can read about the latest news and learn tips and techniques about the software, and there is a Forums sections where you and others can search existing forums for common questions or you can start your own thread. Before we begin, let’s take some time to explore the ArcGIS Resource Center. You can simple search for ‘ArcGIS Resource Center 10’ in a web browser, or follow the link below:

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/home/

Everything you ever wanted to know about ArcGIS (but were afraid to ask) can be found at the Resource Center.

Now, let’s jump in!

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Starting a Project: Launch (open) ArcMap – if there is a shortcut icon on your Windows desktop, you can simply double-click. If there isn’t a desktop, there may be a folder called Geography Applications. Inside that folder, there may be an icon for ArcMap.

This is useful for our purposes inside of the Department of Geography and Regional Planning GIS lab, but how do you open, or launch, a software package on a desktop computer when there is no shortcut icon available on the desktop? You must navigate from the Start Menu.

The Start Menu is found at the bottom left corner of the Microsoft Windows desktop. It is found ‘behind’ the Windows Icon (Fig 1).

Figure 1

Clicking on the Windows icon, you will see another window appear along the left side of the desktop (Fig. 2).

Figure 2

Start Menu

This is the Start Menu.

If the program you seek is not shown, you must find it by navigating through ‘All Programs’

After launching ArcMap, you will see a window like the one in Figure 3 below:

Figure 3

This ‘ArcMap – Getting Started’ window that opens may look different than in Figure 3. Why? Because ArcMap tries to be ‘user friendly’ and do things for us that we don’t necessarily want it to do! (at least I don’t…). So the program offers us options for opening existing projects (.mxd files). But since this is your first time using ArcMap, you may not have anything in this window yet.

We want to open an New Map → Blank Map. In the pane (by pane I mean the smaller window on the left, inside the main window) click ‘New Map’. Then, an option for ‘Blank Map’ should appear under ‘My Templates’. Click ‘Blank Map’ then ‘OK’.

Identifying the component parts to the software package: The ArcMap – ArcInfo window should open with pulldown menus and radio buttons at the top, the Table of Contents (TOC) on the left, the Data Frame window in the center, and the program may open with the ArcCatalog window on the right. I’ve found that ArcCatalog doesn’t always open automatically. If ArcCatalog (Catalog) doesn’t open up automatically, you will want to open it. It can be done two ways: 1) by going to the Window pulldown menu and choosing ‘catalog’, or 2) pressing the button on the toolbar that shows a yellow, two-drawer filing cabinet (with the bottom door partly open) in front of a Microsoft window. It looks like this:

The button is located here:

When I open a Blank Map, my window looks like this:

Figure 4

Now that the program is open and we are familiar with the parts of the GUI (graphical user interface), what are our next steps?

Let’s save the project to a proper workspace and name the project.

Saving your Project and setting up your Project Workspace You can save the project as a named .mxd file by simply pressing the ‘save’ button on the toolbar (it looks like an old-fashioned 3.5 inch floppy disk, a standard button in Windows). When you press the save button for the first time, it works the same as a ‘save as’ function, meaning we can name the file and the file folder where it will be located on our hardware. When you press ‘save’ at any time following the first time, the button will save any changes to the .mxd file that have been made since the last save. I advise that you save your project periodically. ArcGIS is a complicated program that runs on Microsoft Windows (‘nuff said?) – meaning that the program may crash at times. The only defense you have is to ‘save’ regularly. Don’t lose hours of work because the program (or Windows) freezes or crashes and you didn’t ‘save’ regularly!

You will save the .mxd file to your USB thumb drive (if it’s not plugged in, do it now). In the ‘Save As’ window, navigate the ‘Save in’ pulldown menu to your thumbdrive. Your thumbdrive should show up with its own drive letter (example: J:). Once navigated to your hardware, enter a name in the ‘File name’ pulldown and press ‘Save’ to save your .mxd. This is the workspace for your project. The name is up to you.

After this process, look in the Catalog window. In the ‘Location:’ address bar, it should show the workspace you just created, and your new .mxd should show up in the catalog tree.

Table of Contents (TOC)

Tool bar (pulldown menus and buttons)

Additional tools

Data Frame

ArcCatalog window

Setting your Map Document Properties: Great! We have determined our workspace! Now what? Let’s define the properties of the Map Document. First thing to do is to set the Map Document Properties to ‘store relative pathnames to data sources’. Refer to the accompanying handout for a further discussion on absolute vs. relative pathnames.

Go to File→Map Document Properties

Next, let’s make sure our new project file (.mxd) is set up to display data in the Data Frame in the coordinate system, projection, and datum we want to use for our project. Before we can do this, we must determine what coordinate system, projection, and datum we will be using! This is something that should be determined before the project begins (it can be changed later, but problems arise). Luckily for us, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC), the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for metropolitan Pittsburgh has agreed to supply our class with its complete catalog (not ArcCatalog) of spatial data for Indiana County. If it weren’t for this, we would be starting from scratch.

We will be using the coordinate system, projection, and datum that this data is saved as. How do we find out? There are several ways. Ordinarily, we would look in the properties of the data set in Catalog (yes, ArcCatalog). This, however, doesn’t always work. Why? Because many times data that is used for in-house purposes (meaning, it is data that is not to be published publicly) doesn’t follow Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) standards when documenting metadata. So, as we will see, data metadata viewed in Catalog will not provide us with the information we need. What do we do? We seek out other documentation.

Migrating data to your Workspace (Whew!) To obtain the needed information we must now obtain the data. Your next step will be to down load the files to your workspace on your thumbdrive. I have uploaded the data to the course website at http://www.people.iup.edu/rhoch/ClassPages/IntroGIS/IntroGISClassPage.htm. Download the zipped file to your thumb drive or your IUP H drive (not the local C drive!) Do you know how to un-zip a file? If not, use the web to help you do it in the version of Windows you are using. Inside this folder you will find two folders: Metadata and Shapefiles.

The Shapefiles folder is the folder that contains the spatial data. The file format we are using (obviously) is the shapefile format. We will use other formats in later exercises. Open the Shapefile folder (but don’t click or save or do ANYTHING yet, please!). What do you see? The first file should be ‘Agsec.dbf’, followed by six other files named ‘Agsec’ with different file suffixes after it. In total, there are seven files for the ‘Agsec’ data set.

They are:

Go to ‘Pathnames’ and click ‘Store relative pathnames to data sources’

.dbf

.prj

.sbn

.sbx

.shp

.shp.xml

.shx

Using the ArcGIS Resource Center and the good-old world wide web, please find out what these different files mean and write the definitions in above.

This is where Exercise 1 becomes pertinent. How have you decided to set up your data tree/ cataloging schema? Remember – the .mxd file only saves ‘paths’ to the data, so once you add the data into your project and save the project, moving your data at this point will result in a ‘broken path’ (meaning you won’t be able to access that data until the path is repaired).

For your first GIS project, I suggest that you structure you data tree/cataloging schema by file type. This means that you can simply save the ‘Shapefile’ folder onto your workspace as is. Later we will be using additional data types and you can add folders in your schema as we use different data types.

Also save the Metadata folder to your workspace.

In the Metadata folder, open the adobe acrobat file named, ‘SPC GIS Data Dictionary 2008.pdf’. A Data Dictionary is a form of metadata. It is a document that contains information about a series of datasets. Open the Data Dictionary and check it out. Page 2 tells us about the geographic extent, attributes, and alpha-numeric codes used in populating the database, and types of feature classes (themes) and the standard fields in the database for each feature class. Pages 3-5 list the Feature Class, Feature Class Name (file name), Feature Type (data model type), and page index. Back to Page 2… Page 2 also informs the reader of the coordinate system, projection, and datum used. Find it? Eureka! Now you know what information to input into the Data Frame Properties.

What coordinate system, projection and datum is the data saved in? ______________________________________

Using the Data Dictionary, begin to think about which datasets/feature classes you will use to fulfill the requirements of the PADCNR Watershed Planning Outline.

Setting your Data Frame Properties Now, back to ArcGIS and open the Data Frame Properties and find the correct information, then click ‘Apply’, then ‘OK’.

Now that our Coordinate System for the Data Frame Properties has been set, let’s turn our attention back to Catalog.

You should now see the two folders ‘Metadata’ and ‘Shapefiles’ in your workspace. No expand the Shapefiles folder by clicking the small + sign to the left of the folder. It should look something like this:

Go to the ‘View’ pull-down menu and navigate to ‘Data Frame Properties’

In the ‘Data Frame Properties’ click the ‘Coordinate System’ tab. Now what? Navigate through the folders to find the proper settings

Notice that, when viewing your data in Catalog, you only see the Feature Class name and that the other files associated with the feature class (the file extensions that you defined above) do not appear. This is one of the great functions of catalog – when you ‘manage’ your spatial data within ArcCatalog instead of Windows Explorer, ArcCatalog will automatically move the data files associated with an individual feature class. When moving data around in Windows Explorer, you are responsible for making sure that all of the support files are moved together. ArcCatalog is the preferred data management interface once the data tree/cataloging schema is determined.

Catalog houses many of the functions we will need to complete our project. Let’s use Catalog’s functionality to explore our data sets.

Let’s start with the first dataset in our Shapefiles folder, ‘Agsec’. What does ‘Agsec’ mean? You must refer to the metadata and in this case, that information is in the Data Dictionary.

Double clicking on ‘Agsec’ will produce the Shapefile Properties window with four tabs: 1) General, 2) XY Coordinate System, 3)Fields, and 4) Indexes. Poke around these tabs. The XY Coordinate System tab should have the same information as our Data Frame Properties information. Does it?

Right-clicking on ‘Agsec’ will produce a standard Windows right-click window with several ArcGIS specific commands listed. For now, let’s look at the last two: 1) Item description, and 2) Properties. The Item Description window has two tabs – Description and Preview. The Description tab usually lists data about the dataset (metadata), but with these data from the SPC, we know the metadata is recorded in the Data Dictionary. Click the Preview tab. This will give you a ‘peak’ at the data without having to add it to your data frame.

Adding data to your project and displaying in the Data Frame As with most functions in ArcGIS, there are many ways to do the same thing. We are now going to add data to our Data Frame. To do that we will try two different ways: Adding data to your Data Frame from Catalog This is very easy. If the data set you want to display in your Data Frame is listed in the Catalog data tree, simply drag-and-drop into the Table of Contents (TOC). In your Shapefiles folder find the ‘Indiana County_2006’ dataset and drag-and-drop into the TOC. It should look like this:

A second way to add data to your Data Frame is to use the Add Data button on the toolbar. It looks like this:

When you click the Add Data button, a window like this appears:

It is likely that the Add Data button will not automatically open to your Workspace directory. This means we have to define the path to your workspace. To do this, press the ‘Connect to Folder’ Button. Another window appears where you can then navigate to your Workspace. Once there, simply double-click on the dataset you desire to add to your project.

You will need to ‘Connect to Folder(s)’ that are hosting data over a network, or that are in parts of your storage that is not your Workspace.

We will use data served over the network in later exercises.

Connect to Folder Button

Back to ArcMap and the Data Frame – let’s change the color ramp used for the data set ‘Indiana_County_2006’. By the way, what does this data set represent in the ‘real world’?

Now it’s all up to you:

I am asking you to do the following:

Change the display symbology from the default one-color to show Categories of Unique Values based on the Value Field of all of the values in Description 1. (Hint: Start by double-clicking on the dataset text within the TOC and go to the Symbology tab within the Layer Properties window).

Then change the colors of the land cover classes in order to display them with an intuitive, true-color color palette.

Mine looks like this:

When you are finished, export your Data Frame ‘map’ (that’s what the ArcGIS command is, but we know that this simple image is not yet a map, correct?) to a .jpeg file and place it in your file in the S:HOCH\IntroGIS_Sp2011\Student_folders. In this folder, make a new folder and name it in the following way:

Lastname_Firstname

Put the .jpeg file of the ‘map’ and a Word document that has the answers to the questions asked in this exercise in the folder you just named.

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