GIS 4043 - Week 3 Learning ArcGIS Desktop

This week's lab included planning a Trip to the San Diego Zoo as well as completing a map for potential youth Center Sites.  The Maps generated in this weeks laboratory and the process summaries are included below.

Process Summary

·   Opened up ESRI Virtual Campus and began Module 1: Getting Started with ArchGIS Desktop.

·   Opened up my eDesktop and started ArcMap™ by double-clicking Start > All Programs > ArcGIS > ArcMap 10.

·     Copied this weeks file “LearnArcGISDesktop.zip” from R drive to my s: drive and unzipped.

·         In the ArcMap Getting Started dialog box, under Existing maps, clicked "Browse for more."

·    Browsed to LearnArcGIS10\Start folder, double-click tourism.mxd to open the map document.

·   Completed practice exercises as illustrated in the ESRI virtual campus training. 

·   To begin to plan my trip to San Diego, in the Table of Contents, right-clicked San Diego and chose Activate.

·   In order to explore the data in more detail, switched to data view by selecting View Menu > Data View.

·   In the Table of Contents, checked the box next to Hotels to see the hotels display on the map.

·   The goal was to select a Marriott hotel on the map located near the trolley line and the ocean.

·   Used the Find tool to locate all the Marriott hotels.  On the Tools toolbar, clicked the Find tool  to open up the find dialogs box.

·   Typed “Marriott” in find text box. Clicked the drop-down arrow next to the "In" text box and chose Hotels, then clicked find.

·   The Find tool returned five results at the bottom of the dialog box.

·   To get the telephone number for the Marriott Hotel and Marina to call for a reservation I right-clicked Marriott Hotel and Marina in the Find dialog box, and chose Identify to open up the identify window which Showed a list of information about the Marriott Hotel and Marina, including its phone number.

·         I was then able to see a cyan dot over the symbol for Marriott Hotel and Marina, which indicated that the feature was selected. I kept the hotel selected so I could easily see where it was in comparison to the trolley line and major attractions.

·         In the Table of Contents, right-clicked Hotels and clicked Label Features to turn off the labels.

·         To explore the major attractions, in the Table of Contents, checked Major Attractions by right-clicking Major Attractions and choosing Open Attribute Table.  I then explored the attribute table to see what attractions were around the selected Marriott hotel.

·         Using lessons illustrated in ESRI Virtual Campus, I was able to narrow down on the Major Attractions, including walking and trolley distance from hotel.

·         Additionally I was able to find out more about the San Diego Zoo using hyperlinks to documents, images, and even Web sites included on the map using the Hyperlink tool .

·         A trolley to Qualcomm Stadium to watch the football game and a walk to the San Diego Zoo were my final choice based on information provided by GIS.

Process Summary

1)      Browsed to LearnArcGIS10\Start folder downloaded and unzipped earlier and double-clicked youthcenter.mxd.

2)      Then combined the census data and City Zones layers, by first turning on and turn on City Zones.

3)      Right-clicked City Zones and chose zoom to Layer.

4)      Opened the City Zones attribute table by right clicking on the City Zones layer and scrolled to the right until I saw the LU_ABV field.

5)      Turn on Census Blocks 2000 by clicking on the layer to insert a check mark.

6)      Clicked the Zoom In tool and zoomed in to the center of the map.

7)      In order to combine layers, used the ArcGIS union tool.

8)      From the Geoprocessing menu, I chose Union. Next to the Input Features field, I clicked the drop-down arrow and chose City Zones.

9)      I then clicked the Input Features down arrow again and chose Census Blocks 2000; in place of Youth Population (both would give the same information since both layers reference the same data).

10)  I clicked the Browse button next to Output Feature Class and navigated to LearnArcGIS10\Start\YouthCenter.gdb.

11)  To save, I typed the name, zones_Union 1 (in place of Zones_Union as this kept giving me an error message when I tried to replace the initial Zones_unions file created from initial practice.  To save time therefore, I opted to add a “1” after Zones_Unions and then clicked Save and OK.

12)  After a moment, the union output layer displayed in the Table of Contents and on the map.

13)  Right-clicked zones_Unions1 and chose Zoom To Layer to check that Both the LU_ABV and AGE_5_17 fields from both layers were in the new layer = Zones_Unions1.  To do this I right-clicked zones_Unions1 to open up attributes table and scrolled to find the referenced fields.

14)  From the Selection menu, chose Select By Attributes to open box.

15)  For Layer, clicked the down arrow and choose zones_Union1.

16)  In the Method field, I selected "Create a new selection,".

17)  In the list of attribute field names, scrolled down and double-clicked "LU_ABV".

18)  The field was added to the expression box near the bottom of the dialog box.

19)  Clicked the equals sign button .

20)  Clicked Get Unique Values. In the Unique Values list, double-clicked 'RES' and then selected “Apply”.

21)  In the Table of Contents, right-clicked zones_Unions1, pointed to Selection, then clicked Zoom To Selected Features.

22)  To find the areas that also have a youth population over 75, in the Select By Attributes dialog box, in the Method drop-down list, chose "Select from current selection."

23)  In the expression box, highlighted the expression I created previously (LU_ABV = RES) and deleted it.

24)  Created a new expression by scrolling down and double-clicking "AGE_5_17". Clicked the greater than or equal to sign button .

25)  In the expression box, typed 75 and selected “Apply”.

26)  Closed the Select By Attributes dialog box and Clicked the Full Extent button  to look at the map. It was evident that the number of selected features had been reduced.

27)  To Select available buildings by location, from the Selection menu, chose Select By Location. Then chose select features from Available Buildings layer that are completely within selected features in the zones_Union layer.

28)  Clicked Apply, then closed the Select By Location dialog box.

29)  To see how many features are selected on the map, clicked the List By Selection button  at the top of the Table of Contents.

30)  Confirmed that 6 buildings met the criteria.

31)  Clicked the Table of Contents List By Drawing Order button  and turned off the zones_Union layer. 

32)  As completed for previous maps, added essential map elements to the map to include title (Potential Youth Center Sites), legend (being sure to turn off the Legend title), scale, north arrow, name and source – see map.

33)  In order to do this, I had to first convert from data view to layout view under the view menu.

34)  Made sure to periodically save my work.

35)   Exported my file as a JPEG when done to my Student Drive.  Also Archived the file.