Creating a Map with ArcMap - Tufts University

see a description of what it does):
• If you can't get your bearings, try clicking on the Identify icon ( ) and then click on street
centerlines or parks. Can you find Professors Row on the Tufts University Campus? (Hint:
Choose Edit – Find, and type in Professors Row, then right-click on one of the results, and
choose Flash Feature or Zoom to Feature)
• Right-click on the Streetcl layer in the table of contents (be sure you right-click on the actual name
and not on the line symbol) and then click on Label Features as you see here - this will label the
streets, although the labeling takes a minute to appear (a small earth icon revolves at the bottom of
the window to show that it is processing):
• Try zooming and panning again with the labels on. It is much slower drawing, but it may help you
figure out where things are. When you are done, you can turn the labels off again if you wish by
right-clicking on the Streetcl layer, and unchecking Label Features.
• Turn on the Building layer. If you don’t see the buildings, they may be under another layer. You
can make them draw on top by left-clicking on the Building layer, holding down the left-mouse
button, and dragging it up above the other layers. This is how you move layers around on a map.
Turn the Building layer off again for now.
• When you are done looking around, click on the full extent icon ( ) in the Tools menu. If that
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takes you too far out (it goes to the fullest extent of the layer covering the greatest area), then
zoom in a bit so that you see most of Somerville on your screen.
Now choose File-Save. Name the map file basemap1.mxd. This action creates a map file (.mxd).
A map file is a very small file that contains pointers to your data sets and remembers what you had
up in your session. If you quit ArcMap at this point, the next time you start it, you can choose to
start with an existing map (the one you just created) and it will automatically pop up all the data
layers you added in your first session, with the layers turned on when you first saved the map file,
and with the view of the data just as you left it. Thus, map files are easy ways to save work. But
beware - map files do not actually contain the data layers, they only have pointers to the data
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