Creating a Map with ArcMap - Tufts University

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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 • 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 4
layers. If you copied your basemap1.mxd file and tried to open it on a computer without the appropriate GIS data layers, an ArcMap session would start and list the data in the table of contents but nothing would appear because it would not be able to find the data it is pointing to. • When you finish working at a computer, always save your map files to your storage folder or onto a USB drive. In the next section you will learn about how to color the data layers to start making a more interesting and readable map. Part 2 - Defining the general and symbology properties for a layer If you do not have your basemap1.mxd file open, open it now in ArcMap (start ArcMap and choose to open an existing map). This current map needs work. In this section of the tutorial, you will learn how to organize your data layers' properties to start bringing some coherence to the map. If you haven't turned off the labels already, turn them off now by right-clicking on the Streetscl data layer and unchecking Label Features. This will speed things up while you work. Assigning proper layer names • First, you need to give the data layers better names than what they have (e.g., Streetcl should say "Streets") • Right click on the Streetcl layer and choose Properties (alternatively, you can double-click on the data layer name) • When you see the Properties dialog box, click on the General tab and for layer name, type in Streets instead of streetcl. Press OK when finished. Note: this does not change the name of the original data set - it only changes the name as it appears in this session of ArcMap and as it will appear on your final map. • Give all the other layers more coherent names as best as you can (e.g., “City Boundary” instead of CityBoundary, “Ponds and Rivers” instead of hydro25k_poly_clip). In the future, we will deduct points for having incoherent "data-speak" names like "streetcl" appearing in your map. Coloring the data layers The map would be a lot better if the water were colored blue, the parks green, etc. • Right-click on the hydro25k_poly_clip layer (“Ponds and Rivers” or whatever you have called it now) to bring up the Properties dialog box again. • Click on the Symbology tab • To change the color of the layer, click on the colored box under Symbol - this should bring up the Symbol Selector box. 5
Page 1 and 2: Creating a Map with ArcMap Revised
Page 3: one data layer at a time and press
Page 7 and 8: Part 3 - Drawing a layer based on a
Page 9 and 10: • Fill in the dialog box as you s
Page 11 and 12: • Make sure that the Label field
Page 13 and 14: world, or 2000 feet. The scales pro
Page 15 and 16: Downloading image data from MassGIS
Page 17 and 18: • If the orthophoto is below the
Page 19 and 20: you later move or zoom, remember to
Page 21 and 22: frame you want). But in the layout,
Page 23: The ability to export to a digital

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