Lab #2

1. Some of products that come with the ArcGIS software are ArcMap, ArcCatalog, ArcView and ArcEditor. We will be using the ArcMap application mostly because it is what we use when we are viewing and analyzing data, editing, and creating maps, graphs and reports.

2. It is better to perform data analysis and layer symbolization in data view because data view is for those functions; layer view is for composing maps for printing by adding titles and other elements.

3. To obtain help in ArcGIS is to use the “What’s this function” or by going to the ArcGIS help center by clicking help.

4. Attributes describe the geographic feature, for example the population, rainfall, and elevation are attributes of cities.

5. File extensions let you connect to the content of a file faster by un-hiding the extension.

6. Two ways to zoom in or out are the zoom tool and the full extent button.

7. Three operations in the context menu of a layer are, zoom to layer, open attributes table and label features.

8. When a check box next to a layer is grayed out it means its visibility depends on the map scale being smaller, indicated by a small scale bar underneath. You can zoom in on the area and the gray will disappear.

9. Large scale maps define a smaller area for maps like hiking maps (ex. 1:10,000). Small scale maps define larger areas like driving maps (ex 1:1,000,000).

10. A surface is an area with a texture like the plains or the ocean. A feature is a specific thing on the surface like a mountain or a river known as “surface features”

11. GIS cannot create a project’s criteria, that is our job.

12. The city with the max elevation was Tucson at 1045km, and the lowest city was The Big Easy at 0. To figure this out I right clicked the cities visited layer, open the attributes table, right click on the elevation attribute and chose either sort in ascending or descending order.

13. The two techniques I used to find the distance from Dakar to Assab was to use the measure tool in tool box and clicked on the cities (aprox. 6,707km). The second was to look at the attribute table for flight path and add the distances from city to city (aprox. 6,898 km).

14. Two was to find the name of the cities would be to click the far left gray box in the attribute table next to cities name and look at map, or use the I.D. tool.

15.