Exercise 1: An ArcView Sampler (Wisconsin … · Web viewExercise 1: An ArcView Sampler (Wisconsin Edition) This exercise introduces you to the ArcView interface and some common ArcView

Exercise 1: An ArcView Sampler (Wisconsin Edition)

This exercise introduces you to the ArcView interface and some common ArcView operations and is modified from the first exercise in the Introduction to ArcView GIS Course Notebook to use data relevant to Wisconsin.

Conventions used in this exercise:

Indented paragraphs give you specific instructions for completing the exercises. General paragraphs are left justified and explain what you will see before taking a specific action, often giving examples of when or how a particular step might be used in a real-life application. Words in bold type highlight specific choices, such as views, buttons, menus, keystrokes, or other selections, which you will use in performing some action.

Always use the left mouse button unless otherwise directed.

A PC running Microsoft Windows NT or Microsoft 95 or 98 is the intended platform. If you are running on a UNIX system, your instructor will provide any operating system instructions you may need.

Step 1 – Start ArcView and open a project

From the desktop, double-click the ArcView icon.

The ArcView GIS banner is displayed and a progress bar follows the startup process. When ArcView opens, you see the Welcome to ArcView GIS dialog box. Here you have the choice to create a new empty project, a new project with a view, or to open an existing project.

Wisconsin ArcView Exercise #1 - 05/14/23 1

Click the Open an existing project radio button, then click OK.

The Open Project dialog box appears. Directories are shown on the right. The ArcView project files within each directory are shown on the left.

Double-click on the c:\ folder at the top of the directories list. Then move to the esritrn\arcview\wiscexer directory by double-clicking each folder successively.

To Open the project, click wiscex1.apr, then click OK.


Step 2 – Display views and themes

On the left hand side of the ArcView window, you see a Project window that contains two views, Milwaukee Area Counties and Wisconsin.

(Note: If your computer display is set to 640 by 480 pixels, the application will appear larger than your screen.)

Click the Maximize button in the upper right corner of the application window to resize it to your screen.

Double-click the Wisconsin view. (Double-clicking is a shortcut for highlighting the name of the view and clicking Open.)

The view opens with a map of Wisconsin. Notice that the Counties theme is checked in the Table of Contents and displayed in the view. The Cities of 10,000 theme is not checked and therefore is not displayed


Click on the check box by the Cities of 10,000 theme to turn it on.

The Cities of 10,000 theme draws in the view, but is obscured by the Counties theme. You will change the drawing order so that the cities theme draws on top of the others.

In the Table of Contents, place the cursor on the Cities of 10,000 theme (anywhere on the raised area). Now click and drag the theme to the top of the Table of Contents. When you release the mouse button, the theme order changes on the Table of Contents and the cities are visible in the view.

Each point represents a city with a population of 10,000 or more. A great many of them are clustered in the Milwaukee area. But at this scale, they are hardly distinguishable from one another. You can use the Zoom In tool to draw a rectangle around an area you want to inspect in more detail.

Click the Zoom In tool.

As you move the cursor over the view, it changes to a magnifying glass.

Place the cursor slightly to the northwest of the city of Milwaukee, then click and drag to draw a rectangle around the Milwaukee region. When you release the mouse button, the view redraws.


The view zooms in on the Milwaukee region, and the cities are now clearly distinguishable. The city of Milwaukee is labled. To find out which city a point represents, you can use the Identify tool.

Click the Identify tool.

In the view, the cursor changes to crosshairs. Click on any city to identify it.

The city you chose is identified in the left side of the Identify Results dialog box. The information to the right is taken from the Cities of 10,000 theme attribute table.

Click on a few more cities to add to the Identify Results dialog box. When you are finished, close the Identify Results dialog box.

To focus on another part of the world, you can shift the view with the Pan tool.


Click the Pan tool.

Put the cursor (which changes to a hand) in the middle of the view. Click and drag to the right, until you have brought the cursor to the right side of the display area. Release the mouse button. ArcView redraws the view.

The view pans to the counties in and around the Madison area.

Step 3 – Use online help

So far in this exercise, you have opened an ArcView project and a view. You have turned on a theme, changed the theme drawing order, zoomed in on a view, identified features, and panned the view. You can get more information about these topics, and other ArcView opearions, with context-sensitive help.

Click the context-sensitive Help button.

The cursor changes to an arrow with a question mark.


Move the cursor anywhere inside the View window, and click to get help.

ArcView takes you to the “What is a view?” Help Topic.

Notice that, at the bottom of the Help Topic, there are hypertext links (green text) to related topics (Table of Contents and What is a theme?”. When you place the cursor over one of these topics, it becomes a hand with a pointing finger. Clicking on a hypertext link takes you to that topic.


Click on the topic What is a theme?

ArcView takes you to the “What is a theme?” Help Topic.

You can get help on a topic by clicking the Help Topics button. Suppose that you want to know how far it is from Milwaukee to Madison, but you do not know how to measure distance in ArcView.

Click the Help Topics button in the ArcView Help window. You see three tabs – Contents, Index, and Find. Select the Index tab. In the text input box,type only the first few letters of the word measure. This will search for any version of the word measure (measure, measuring, measured).

Highlight the entry for measuring features on a view.


Click the Display button at the bottom of the Help Topics window.


ArcView takes you to the Help page on measuring features.

In the next step, you will measure the distance from Milwaukee to Madison. For now, close the Help window.

Step 4 – Get information about features

In this step, you will learn how to measure distances between features, how to find features, and how to select features and examine their attributes in a theme table. First you will measure the distance from Milwaukee to Madison.

Use the Zoom Out button until you can see both the cities of Milwaukee and Madison. Pressing the Zoom Out button will increase the area visible in the View by approximately 20 percent increments.

Click on the Measure tool.


Click on Milwaukee, then move the cursor to Madison. A line draws between the two cities. Double-click to end the line.

The distance from Milwaukee to Madison is reported in the same status bar (lower-left corner of the Application window). Your result may vary slightly

Another way to get information about features is to select them in the view and then examine their records in the theme table. When you select a feature in a view, you also select its record in the theme table.

There are several ways to select features in a view; one way is to use the Find button. Suppose you want to locate Brown County and make it the focus of your view.

Click on the Counties theme in the view’s Table of Contents to make it the active theme (it appears raised).

Click the Find button.

In the Find Text in Attributes dialog box that displays, type Brown and click OK.


ArcView searches the Counties theme table for the first occurance of “Brown”; when a match is found, the corresponding feature is highlighted and centered in the view.

Another way to select features in the view is with the Select Feature tool.

Click the Select Feature tool.

Put the cursor anywhere in the view, then click and drag to make a rectangle that covers an area bigger than Brown County. When you release the mouse button, any counties that are wholly or partially inside the rectangle will be selected in the view. (Your selection does not have to match this graphic.)


Now you can examine the attributes for the selected counties by opening the theme table.

Click the Open Theme Table button.

The Attributes of Counties theme table is displayed. The selected records match the selected features in the view. You display the selected records at the top of the table by using the Promote button.

Click the Promote button.

The selected records move to the top of the table. Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the table to scroll to the right until the Name field is visible.


Now scroll to the end of the table and look at the remaining fields, which contain a variety of demgraphic information about them. For now, click the Select None button to deselect the selected records and features.

Step 5 – Display and modify a table

You can change many aspects of a table’s appearance to suit your needs. You can hide, rename, and resize fields, and change the order of records. None of these changes affect the source data for the table.

Suppose you are making a map of projected Wisconsin population for the year 1999. Your population data for 1990 may be useful at another time, but right now you do not need it. You will hide this field (and others) in the Attributes of Counties table and also change the name of the “Pop1999” field to make it more descriptive.

With the Attributes of Counties table active, select Properties from the Table menu.

The Table Properties dialog box displays. At the bottom of the dialog box, you see a list of fields in the table. A check mark to the left of each field tells you that the field is presently displayed. To the right of each field is an Alias column.


Examine the field list and scroll down if necessary. To turn off State_name, State_fips, Cnty_fips, Fips, Area, and Pop1990 in the visible column, click the checkmarks beside them. Click in the Alias column of the Pop1999 field and type 1999 Population. Click OK.

The fields you checked off are no longer visible in the table and your alias replaces the “Pop1999” field name.

Now suppose you would like to sort the counties in order of projected population, from largest to smallest.

In the table, click on the 1999 Population field name to make it active (highlighted), then click the Sort Descending button.


The records are sorted in descending order by population value.

Having sorted the counties by population, you might decide to put them in alphabetical order instead.

In the table, click on the Name field to make it active, then click on the Sort Ascending button.

Scroll to the top of the table and notice that the records are sorted alphabetically.

Close the theme table by clicking the X in the upper right corner of the window. To see the entire view again, click the Zoom to Full Extent button.

Close the view.


Step 6 – Display and modify a chart

In the Project window, click on the Views icon to highlight it. Then double-click on the Milwaukee Area Counties view to open it.

The view shows seven counties in southeastern Wisconsin classified by 1990 population features. A second theme, which classifies the counties by estimated 2020 population, is turned off.

To turn off the Population 1990 theme, click on the check box beside it. Then turn on the Population 2020 theme by clicking on the check box beside it.

The counties are shaded by their estimated 2020 population. Their order is still the same as in 1990, but that does not tell the whole story. It would be useful to see a chart that compares the population data for 1990 and 2020.


Click on the Project window to make it active (if it is obscured, you can activate it by selecting Wiscexer1.apr from the Window pull-down menu), then click on the Charts icon to show the charts associated with the project. Double-click on the Population Chart.

Comparative population data for the seven counties is included in the chart. The chart clearly shows that the population of all counties has increased, and that of Milwuakee has grown more than the others. If you wanted to see the change in proportional terms, a pie chart would be better.

Click the Pie Chart Gallery button.

Click on the first pie chart style in the gallery, then click OK.


The slice of pie representing Milwaukee County has decreased slightly from 1990 to 2020, while that of Waukesha and Washington Counties have increased slightly.

Close the chart when you are finished looking at it. Later you will learn how to create and edit your own charts.

Step 7 – Display and modify a chart

In a map layout, you combine views, tables, charts, and other graphic elements on a page. You can then send the layout to a plotter or printer. In this step, you will create a layout from the southeastern Wisconsin population data.

Click on the Milwaukee Area Counties view to make its window active. From the View menu, choose Layout to open the Template Manager.

The Template Manager stores layout templates. Each template is a blueprint with its own arrangement of layout elements. You can use one of the default templates or create your own. For now, you will use the default landscape template.


To create a layout, highlight Landscape and click OK.

The layout shows a view of the southeastern Wisconsin counties classified by estimated 2020 population that reflects the current view. A legend, scale bar, north arrow. And title make the map meaningful. The grid that displays is used as a guide for placing graphic elements in the layout. The grid does not appear in a printed layout. You will learn how to design and create your own layout in Section 10, Creating layouts.

Step 8 – Close the project

From the Window menu, choose wiscex1.apr to make the Project window active. From the File menu, choose Close Project. Click No when asked if you want to save your changes.

Do not exit from ArcView.

END


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Exercise 1: An ArcView Sampler (Wisconsin … · Web viewExercise 1: An ArcView Sampler (Wisconsin Edition) This exercise introduces you to the ArcView interface and some common ArcView