INTRODUCTION TO ARCVIEW 3.

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GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM

A Basic Training Tutorial

Brown University
Environmental And Remote TecHnologies Lab

MacMillan Hall
Room 105

Written By
Lynn Carlson
GIS Project Manager/System Administrator
 Chapter 1
The Basics Of Arcview

1. Open a new view window by highlighting VIEW in the project window and clicking
once on the NEW button.

2. Resize your windows to take advantage of the monitor’s size.

3. Note the MENU BAR, BUTTON BAR, and TOOL BAR at the top of the window

Menu Bar
Button Bar
Tool Bar

4. Note that most icons are grayed out. This is because you haven’t added any
information yet.

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5. Adding Themes, aka Coverages, aka Shapefiles

The most common types of geographic files are coverages, or shapefiles. Both
terms refer to files that contain geographic features of the same type. For example,
roads may be a shapefile or coverage, rivers is another, land use is another. In a GIS,
these coverages or shapefiles are represented as points, lines, or areas (polygons),
depending on their characteristics. Roads are typically represented as line features,
drinking water wells are best represented as point features, while wetlands would be
best represented by areas (polygons). Coverages and shapefiles not only have a
geographic location, but a table that contains information (attributes) about each
feature within that file. For example, each road might be identified by what town it
is in, or the condition of it’s pavement, or it’s name, or it’s speed limit.

Coverages are the native file format of Arc/Info software. Shapefiles are the native
file format of Arcview software. While Arc/Info and Arcview are two entirely
different software packages, coverages and shapefiles can be used in either one. One
difference that is significant to you as an end user of Arcview is that you cannot edit
or change a coverage. The coverage must be changed to a shapefile first. We’ll
learn how to do this later.

In Arcview, coverages and shapefiles are added to your project as Themes.

a. Click on the Add Theme button in the Button Bar

b. A new window will open with two window “panes”. In the right pane, scroll
down to the rhodeisland folder directory. In the left pane, click once on Towns
and then click OK. The theme Towns will appear on the left side of your View
window.

c. Now we’ll add two themes at the same time:

a. Click on the Add Theme button once again. In the left side of the window, click
once on Villages and then HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY and click once on
Streams. Click OK. Using the shift key allows you to add several themes at the
same time as long as the themes are in the same folder.

6. Turn the themes on by clicking in the check box to the left of the theme name.

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 You can also add themes by using the MENU BAR: Go to View, then Add
Theme. You will often find that there may be two or three different methods for
doing the same thing in Arcview. For now, hit Cancel.

7. Drawing Order

a. Arcview draws themes in order from the bottom to the top. Currently, it draws
Towns first, then streams, then villages. This is important because there may be
a situation when you have added a theme but you cannot see it. In this case, one
of the other themes is probably drawing over it.

b. To demonstrate, click on Towns and HOLDING THE MOUSE BUTTON

DOWN, DRAG the Towns theme to the top. Your LEGEND should now look
like this:

c. Note that, in the View, you can no longer see Villages and Streams because
Towns is covering them up.

d. Drag Towns back to the bottom of the LEGEND.

8. Making A Theme Active – a very important feature that you will see often!

a. In order to do any type of process on a theme (e.g. open its table, generate a
query statement), it must be the Active Theme.

b. In the Legend, note how the theme Towns has a raised look.

9. Click once on the word Villages - note that it now has the raised look. Villages is
now the active theme.

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10. Exploring A View’s Tool Bar Icons

a. The Identify Tool is used to bring up a record about a geographic feature that
you point to in the view.

1. Make Towns the Active Theme again.

2. Click once on the Identify Tool icon.

3. Move the cursor into the View (the cursor should now be a crosshair) and
over the City of Providence. Click once.

4. A new window will appear entitled “Identify Results” with the information
from the Table that is part of that theme.

5. Click on another town, and a second record will appear with information
about that town.

6. Now make Villages the Active Theme, then click on one of the points that
represent a single village and a third record will appear with information
about that village.

7. Now dismiss this window of records (right mouse click, dismiss)

Remember that a theme must be active for you to obtain the correct record about
the particular feature you are trying to identify. If you are using the identify
tool and you hear a beep when you click the mouse, chances are the theme you
are pointing to is not the active theme.

b. The Selection Tool is used to select one or more features in the View.

1. Click once on the Selection Tool icon.

2. Move the cursor (in the shape of a pointer) into the View.

3. Click once and while HOLDING THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN, DRAG
the cursor from the lower left to the upper right (i.e. draw a box) around
several villages. The villages will turn yellow, indicating that they are now
selected.

4. Make Towns your Active Theme, and repeat the selection. Several towns
should now turn yellow.

5. To CLEAR selections, use the Clear Select icon in the Button Bar.
You will have to do this twice, once with Towns active and once with
Villages active.

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c. The Zoom In and Zoom Out Tools

1. Click once on the Zoom In icon, then move the cursor (now a magnifying
glass) into the View.

2. Click once and HOLD DOWN THE MOUSE BUTTON And Drag a box in
the View. You will zoom in to the extent of the box.

3. Click on the Zoom Out Tool, move the cursor into the View and click
slowly, one click at a time. You will now gradually zoom back out with
each click. You can also draw a box to zoom out further at one time.

d. The Pan Tool moves your View around.

1. Click on the icon, move the cursor (now a hand) into the View. HOLD
THE MOUSE BUTTON down and drag your view around.

e. The Measure Tool will measure distances on your View.

1. Before measuring, we must tell Arcview two things: the units the theme is
stored in (aka map units); and what units you want reported to you (aka
distance units). Go up to your Menu Bar and click on View. Go to
Properties. When the new window comes up, choose meters for the map
units (currently all the themes in our View are stored in meters) and feet for
distance units (unless you like metric in which case you can choose meters
for this as well). Click OK.

2. Now click once on the measuring tool icon, then move your cursor (now a
ruler) into the View. Click once on the center of a Village point, then move
the cursor to the center of a neighboring village point.

3. When you arrive at the second village, look at the lower left hand corner of
your Arcview window. You will see two measurements: segment length
and the length.

4. At first, both numbers will be the same. But, click once and then move the
cursor to the center of a third village point. The length number is additive –
it is measuring the entire length from Village one to two to three. The
segment length is not additive - it is only measuring the length from your
last point to your next point.

5. Click twice in rapid succession to escape from the measuring tool.

f. The Label Tool adds Labels to the features in your View

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 1. First, make sure you are zoomed out so that the whole state is shown in your
view and that Towns is your Active Theme.

2. Click once on the label icon, move the cursor (now a crosshair with a tag)
into the view and place it over a town. Click once. The name of the town
will be placed in the View. Label as many towns as you wish.

3. You will learn how to change the size and the font later on.

g. The Text Tool lets you add free hand text to the View

1. Click once on the text icon, move the cursor anywhere inside the View, and
click once. A new window called Text Properties will appear.

2. Type something clever into the box. You can specify the alignment, the
spacing and the rotation of the text, although these characteristics won’t
appear until you click OK and the text is added to the View.

3. The text will be placed where you first clicked, but don’t worry, you will
learn how to move it in a minute….Go ahead and experiment with rotating,
etc.

h. The Graphic Tool allows you to draw free hand shapes on the View

1. At first you will only see a point shape

but if you click on the icon, and hold the mouse button down, other choices
will appear

2. Pick a shape by dragging the mouse cursor down the menu, then move the
cursor into the view and draw the shape. Experiment!!

Note: The labels, text and shapes you’ve added are now individual “graphic
elements” in your View. Each element can be moved and resized by itself, or you
can select several at a time and move them as a group.

i. The Pointer Tool lets you select, move, change, and delete elements you’ve
added.

1. Click once on this icon, then move the cursor into the view and click once
on any of the elements you have added. These include labels and text as
well as shapes.

2. You will know that you have selected a graphic element when "handles"
appear around it. At this point, you can resize it, move it, or delete it (hit
the delete key). If it is a text element and you have a spelling error, you can
click twice and edit it in the Text Properties window. When a graphic

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 element is selected, you can delete it by hitting the delete key or going to
the Menu Bar, Edit, Delete Graphics choice.

3. You can delete all the elements at once by going to the Menu Bar, Edit,
Select All Graphics, then Edit again, and Delete Graphics.

j. Now, return to your Text Tool.

1. Click on the icon and HOLD THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN. You will
now have a pull down menu that gives you some alternative choices for
adding text. Have some fun experimenting with these!

2. Two types of call-out boxes or

3. Text with a leader line

TEXT

4. Shadowed Text TEXT

5. Text that can follow a line such as a highway or stream T

k. Now, return to your Label Tool.

1. Once again, click on the tool and HOLD THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN.
You will now have another pull down menu that gives you some similar
choices for labels.

2. In addition to call-out boxes and leader lines, there are some Highway
Shields.

Note the difference between the label tool and the text tool: the label tool adds text
automatically from the database associated with the theme; while the text tool allows you
to type in your own text.

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11. Exploring A View’s Menu Bar Icons

(a) (b) (c)

a. You already know the Save Project icon (a), the Add Theme icon (b), and the
Clear Select icon (c).

b. First, use your Selection Tool to select the City of Providence

(remember that your Selection Tool is in the Tool Bar).

c. Now use the Zoom To Selected icon . Your View will now zoom in to the
geographic extent of what you have selected, i.e. the City of Providence.

d. Next, use the Zoom To Active Themes icon (just to the left of the Zoom To
Selected icon) to zoom back out to the geographic extent of your active theme,
which still should be Towns.

e. Add the theme called Basins (in the /class2/av101/rhodeisland directory). Turn
on the theme.

Note how you cannot see the entire Basins theme – this is because you have told
Arcview that you only want to be zoomed in to the geographic extent of the
Active Theme, Towns. The geographic extent of the Basins theme is much
larger than that of Towns. Use the Zoom To All Themes icon to zoom
out to the full geographic extent of all themes whether they are active or not.

f. And now for even more zooming capability…..

Zooms In a little bit with each single click

Zooms Out a little bit with each single click

g. And the Previous Extent icon which remembers where you were before you
last zoomed in or out

h. This next icon allows you to select features in a view by drawing a

graphic element around them. It involves several steps.

1. First, go back to your Tool Bar to the Graphic Tool and select the tool
that allows you to draw a box in the View.

2. Double check in your legend, and make Basins the Active Theme if it
is not already.

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 3. Now draw a box around a single watershed basin (click once and
HOLD THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN and drag the cursor from a
lower left hand corner to an upper right hand corner).

4. Now click once on the icon. Any watershed basin that has
any portion inside this box (graphic element) will now turn
yellow and become the selected set. You can also select features with
circles or polygon shapes that you draw on the View. Experiment!
Before moving on just make sure to Clear Selected Features

i. Changing Properties of a Theme

1. Click once on this icon

2. A new window will appear entitled Theme Properties. In this window you
can make some important changes to your Active Theme (should still be
Basins). Note that you can also acquire this window using the Menu Bar:
Select Theme, then on the pull down menu, select Properties.

3. First, you can change how the name of the Theme appears in the legend.
On the left side of the window, make sure Definitions is highlighted. Then,
in the box Theme Name, replace Basins with Rhode Island Watersheds.
Click OK and see how the name of the theme has changed in the legend.

4. Remember adding labels? Go back to the Theme Properties window again

and click on the icon in the left side of the window that says Text Labels.
This is where you can choose which field contains the information from the
database you wish to use for labeling. Currently, Basin is chosen which,
upon using your Label Tool, would add the name of each major watershed
basin to your View.

To the right of the box called Label Field click on the down arrow and you
will see that another choice is Subbasin. If you make this the choice in the
Label Field, the Label Tool will use the values from this field to label the
basins.

You can also change the initial positioning of the label by clicking on one of
the text buttons. The default position is for the labels to be placed in the
center of the feature.

Click OK and add some labels

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j. Using the Find Utility

1. Make sure Towns is your Active Theme and turn off Streams,Villages and
Basins.

2. Click once on the Find Icon, and a new window will appear asking you to
enter something to search for. Type in Burrillville and hit OK.

3. Arcview searches through the database, selects the record(s) that contain
this text, selects it, highlights it, and zooms you to it.

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k. Introducing the Legend Editor

1. Don’t like the colors Arcview selected for your Themes? Make Towns your
Active Theme. Open the Legend Editor by either clicking on the icon,
or alternatively, use the Menu Bar: Select Theme and then from the
pull down menu select Edit Legend.

2. A new window will appear entitled Legend Editor.

3. Note that the Theme reflects the name of your Active Theme

4. Double Click on the shaded box.

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5. Another new window will appear entitled Fill Palette. The
default is to a solid fill. But this can be changed to any of the other
fill patterns (stripes, dots, zig-zags).

Change the color by clicking on the Paintbrush and selecting a color

from the Color Palette.

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5. Dismiss the Palette window and then, back in the Legend Editor, make sure
you hit the Apply Button to make the change. Then dismiss the Legend
Editor window.

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 6. Now we’ll experiment with changing the Legend for a Point Theme
(Villages).

a. Click twice on the Symbol to open the Marker Palette where you can change
the marker symbol, it’s size, angle, and the color of the marker symbol.

9. Repeat the process with the Streams theme – you will have a variety of line
symbols and colors to choose from.

Don’t forget to hit the Apply button or your changes will not take effect!

l. Changing Fonts and Sizes of your text elements.

1. Using your Text Tool

on the Tool Bar, add some text to your View.

2. On the MENU BAR, Select WINDOW, and then from the pull down menu,
select Show Window Palette. A Font Palette will open from which you may
choose from a variety of fonts (ignore ESRI fonts for now).

3. You can change the size

4. You can change the style

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 5. By selecting the paintbrush, i.e. the Color Palette, you can change the text
color. Just make sure you select Text from the scroll bar.

Dismiss this palette.

Before going any further, let’s change the name of the View to something more
descriptive than View 1.

In the MENU BAR, Select View. In the pull down menu, select Properties (remember
this? It is where we told Arcview what the units of measure were for our View). The
View Properties window will appear. Where it says Name, replace “View 1” with “State
of Rhode Island”.

Click OK, and note how the name of the View has changed on the View Window and in
your Project Window.

It is important to rename your Views! Otherwise your Project Window will create a long
list – View 1, View 2, View 3, View 4, etc. Before you know it, you’ll have this huge list
of Views, and not a clue as to what is in each one. You could spend a lot of time opening
and closing them until you find the right one! It’s much more efficient to rename your
Views to something descriptive.

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m. Using the Legend Editor to display information about your Theme.

1. Open an entirely new View.

2. Add Towns as your only theme. Turn the theme on and make it Active.

3. Open the Legend Editor.

4. In the box where it says Legend Type , click on the scrolling arrow and
change from Single Symbol to Unique Value . For the Values Field,
choose Name . As soon as you do this, Arcview will fill the window with
the names of each town in the database and assign it a color. You can
change the colors with the Color Scheme at the bottom of the window.

5. Hit the Apply button, and the changes you’ve made will show up in your
View. You are now representing Towns by one of the attributes in its
Table.

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 n. Adding Additional Symbology (shades, markers, lines, colors)

1. The default shade symbol set for Arcview doesn’t have that many colors to
choose from; therefore some Towns may initially be assigned the same color.
You can change this by clicking twice on the colored symbol box to the left of
the Town’s name to bring up the Fill Palette, then click on the paintbrush to
bring up the color palette (just as we’ve done previously) and choose a color that
is unique for this town.

2. In some situations, you may want to have additional color choices that are not in
the default symbol set.

3. Make sure either your Fill Palette or your Color Palette is open.

4. Click once on the small artist’s palette on the far right

5. In the new Palette Manager window, choose Color for your Type

6. Click the Load Button.

7. In the right window pane, change folders to

/application/arcview32/arcview3/symbols

8. Here you will see several files with a .avp (arcview palette) extension. Some of
these are markers, some are shades, some are lines, etc.

9. For now, just highlight the artist.avp file and click OK.

10. Give it a few seconds to load, then go back to your Color Palette window and
scroll down. You’ll have many more colors to choose from.

Note: Every color printer will interpret colors differently. What you see on the screen is
not necessarily what you will get from the printer. It may take you several tries to get the
color scheme you are looking for. However, there are ways to print out the palettes on
your own printer so you will have a better idea of what the colors will be. But that’s a bit
complex at this stage, so we’ll skip it for now.

o. Saving Legends

1. Sometimes you may spend lots of time creating a legend getting the colors and
symbols just right. If you want to use this legend in another View, or in a
completely different Arcview Project, you should save it so you don’t have to re-
create it.

2. Open the Legend Editor for the Towns theme.

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3. Change the Legend Type from Unique Value to Graduated Color and the
Classification Field to Population.

4. You are now representing Towns by a range of the number of people in that Town
(note: these are not real numbers – I just entered them at random for demonstration
purposes!!).

5. Click the Apply Button.

6. Next, click the Save Button in the upper right corner.

7. When the new window opens, check to make sure you are in your own directory.
Then on the left side, give your new legend a filename.

8. Click OK. It will appear as if nothing has happened, but you have actually saved
that as a file in your directory.

9. Now dismiss the Legend Editor

10. Open an entirely new View and Add the themes Towns (from the
/class1/av101/rhodeisland directory). Turn it on.

11. Open it’s Legend Editor and Click the Load Button.

12. Change to your own directory again, and find the legend you just made in the left
window pane. Highlight it and click OK.

13. Another window will open; accept the defaults and just click OK.

14. Arcview will automatically change the legend to look exactly like the one you saved
from the other View. You could use this legend in a completely separate Arcview
project too.

p. One last trick! open the Legend Editor for the Towns theme, and in the Legend Type
box, choose Dot. In the Density Field, choose Population. In the Dot Legend, make
1 dot = 50. Hit the Apply button, and you now have a Dot Density map, which
illustrates the population of each town by 1 dot for every 50 people in that town.

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12) Question: Where Do These Themes Come From?

Answer: A whole bunch of places!

Examples

• The Rhode Island Geographic Information System – RIGIS is a group of

organizations, including federal, state, and municipal agencies, non-profit and
commercial organizations, and academic institutions, which, over the past 10
years, have created themes for the entire state of Rhode Island. Collectively,
these themes make up the RIGIS Database. You’ve already used several of the
themes from this database: Towns, Villages, Streams, and Basins. The
organization that creates the theme does its best to update each theme. As part of
RIGIS, students, faculty and staff at Brown have free access to all the RIGIS
themes.

• You – There are many ways you can create your own themes. We will be
exploring a couple of these methods later on in the workshop.

• Web Sites – Many state and federal agencies (e.g. Connecticut DEP, Mass DEP,
US EPA, USGS, NOAA, US Census) have web sites where you can download
themes that go beyond Rhode Island’s borders. There are also private companies
that sell themes. The company that makes Arcview (Environmental Systems
Research Institute or ESRI) has a portion of their web site devoted to sharing and
or selling data called ArcData Online. They also have a jump station where you
can hyperlink to places all over the world for themes.

• Other Individuals - Themes can be sent through email, ftp, or on floppies or zip
disks.

12. An Example of Downloading Shapefiles

1. Close down Arcview (File, Exit).

2. In the shelltool window type netscape at the prompt. This will start Netscape
Navigator. Go to http://www.esri.com/data/online/index.html

3. When this web page comes up, choose Select By Geographic Area, then choose
ESRI Thematic Data. Click the GO button. This will bring up a list of
available themes. Choose one from either Census or FBI and then click Make
The Map. Once a map is rendered there will be a new button Proceed to
Download. Click this. Then click Download Data Now.

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 4. A new window will come up asking you to Save As. Just make sure you are in
your own folder in case someone else is saving the same theme (if you need help
with this give a yell!). Netscape will download the theme as a .zip file.

5. Once it is done, go to File, then Exit to leave Netscape, and in the shelltool
window do an ls (remember?!) and you should see the file you downloaded.

6. Before we can use it in Arcview, we have to unzip it. Type the following at the
unix prompt:
unzip filename.zip

7. You will get a message saying the file is extracting. When it is done, do another
ls.

8. You should see at least three individual files with the same name, but different
extensions. In some cases, you may get more than three files. But at least you
should have filename.shp, filename.shx, filename.dbf.

IMPORTANT: Shapefiles consist of more than just one file! If you don’t have at least
the .shp, the .shx, and the .dbf, Arcview will not recognize the file as a theme!
Consequently if you rename a shapefile you must rename all of it’s corresponding files.
Therefore instead of using the Windows File Manager or Windows Explorer to copy,
delete, or rename your themes, you should use Arcview!

9. Restart Arcview with a blank project and an empty View Window

10. With your View Window active, choose File, then Manage Data Sources

11. When the new window opens you will see a list of shapefiles in the left window
pane. This is where you would copy, delete or rename a theme. Remember that
the shapefile cannot be in use (i.e. in a View). If it is, you will get an error
message, and you won’t complete the process.

13. Importing .E00 Files

1. You may encounter files with an .e00 extension, for example basins.e00 or
towns.e00. These files may be downloaded directly from some web sites, or in
some cases you may find that when you unzip a .zip file, you get an .e00 file
instead of the series of files that make up a theme.

2. These .e00 files are simply Arc/Info coverages (not shapefiles!) that have been
“packaged” (exported) nicely for transfer through email or over the web. It is
important for a coverage to be packaged in this manner so that when transferred,
all parts of the coverage are maintained.

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 3. Arcview cannot read .e00 files until they are imported. This can be done by
typing import filename.e00 filename at the unix command line prompt.

13. Converting a Coverage to a Shapefile

In most cases, it will probably not be necessary for you to convert a coverage to a
shapefile. However, if you need to add your own data to a theme's table, say from an
Excel spreadsheet or Access database, you will have to do the conversion. Here’s how:

1. Add the theme schools (from the rhodeisland directory) to your View.

2. Make sure it is the Active Theme.

3. Go to your Menu Bar and choose Theme, then Convert To Shapefile.

4. Arcview will ask you to give the shapefile a name. Make sure you are in your own
directory, and give it a unique name.

5. Click Ok. Arcview will process the shapefile and ask if you wish to add it to your
View. Go ahead and say yes. You will now have a duplicate of the coverage that
you are free to edit.

Unless you are creating your own new data or updating a shapefile’s table with new
information, it is NOT a good idea to move geographic features (the lines, points, or
polygons). By the time these coverages or shapefiles reach you, the features (e.g. the
location of each school, or the location / configuration of a stream) have been placed
according to certain standards of accuracy and certain procedures. If you move a
geographic feature, you are altering the integrity of the data. If you find that a feature is
located erroneously or does not reflect what you know from experience, you should
notify the person or agency responsible for creating the original data so that they can
update the coverage or shapefile using the appropriate and accepted methods.

In many cases, you may wish to add information or data to the shapefile’s Table which
we will explore in Chapter Two.

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 CHAPTER TWO
EXPLORING ARCVIEW TABLES

1. First, if you currently have a project open, close everything down and create a new
project, with a new View (File, Close Project, Open Project). Make sure you are in
your own directory.

2. When the window comes up asking if you want to add data to the view now, say no (I
want you to practice on your own!).

3. You should now have an empty Project Window and an empty View.

4. Add the theme Towns (rhodeisland directory) to your View and turn it on.

5. Opening Tables in Arcview

a. When you have an existing Theme in your View that is the Active Theme, just
click on the Open Table icon.

b. Arcview will now open a new window that contains the attribute data of the
Towns theme (the Active Theme).

c. These data were entered into the table when the original theme (coverage) was
created. Later on, you will see how to create your own tables when you generate
your own themes. Please note that the table you see will differ slightly from what
is represented above – the title will be Attributes of Towns, and the first column
will be entitled Shape.

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 d. Note how your Project Window now contains the title of the Table, and that the
Tables icon has been highlighted.

e. You will find that tables are much like spreadsheets, and in fact, many, although
not all, Arcview tables use the dBase (.dbf) format.

f. The first five columns of the table are generated when the theme is created in
Arc/Info, NOT Arcview, as a coverage. This is an important distinction. When
an Arc/Info coverage is made, topology is generated. Topology is Arc/Info lingo
for the spatial relationship between connecting or adjacent features. Because
coverages have topology, the area and perimeter of each polygon in a polygon
coverage can be calculated, and the length of every line (arc) in a line coverage
can be calculated. Shapefiles, which are themes created in Arcview, do not
initially have topology, although there are ways to generate topology for them if it
is needed.

g. Since Towns is a polygon coverage (theme) that was originally created in

Arc/Info, the area and perimeter of each polygon are in the Table. In this
particular theme or coverage, the area is in Square Meters and the perimeter is in
meters. In a line coverage, such as roads, the length of every arc is available.
Current RIGIS data are in State Plane Feet and therefore your measurements are
in square feet for areas and feet for lengths.

Note: If you have converted a coverage to a shapefile, then edited the geographic
features of the shapefile (which remember is not always a good thing to do!), be aware
that the area, length, and perimeter values will not be automatically re-calculated. There
are ways to do this, but it requires an extra few steps which we will explore later.

24
 h. Towns# and Towns-ID are important numbers that should never be edited. These
numbers are how Arcview keeps track of which record in the table belongs to
which polygon in the View.

6. Interactions Between Views and Tables

a. Resize your Table window so you can see all the columns – Name, MCD, CFPS,
County, Osp, Cfps-mcd, and Population.

b. The column headings are the coverage’s (theme’s) attributes: they contain
characteristics of each polygon in the coverage.

c. I’m going to digress here for a minute to point out that, sometimes, attributes can
be cryptic. For instance, what in the world is Osp? In this case, this attribute
refers to a numeric code assigned to each town in Rhode Island by the RI Office
of State Planning. MCD, CFPS, and Cfps-mcd happen to refer to census
information. For our purposes, these attributes are not significant. What is
significant is that every coverage/shapefile has attributes, and that a well-
documented coverage/shapefile should have metadata associated with it that tells
you what each of the attributes means, among other things. An example of
metadata is attached at the end of this Chapter.

d. Okay, back to your Table….Notice how the Menu Bar, Button Bar, and Tool Bar
have changed. Some of the icons will be familiar but most are different because
you can do different things with Tables than you can with Views.

e. Start with the Pointer icon

Point at the first record under the attribute Name (probably “Woonsocket”). You
have now Selected the record – it turns yellow – and the Town of Woonsocket
will also be highlighted in the View.

f. Hold down the shift key and point to several more records; by doing this you can
select many records at once.

g. Clear the Selected Records

h. Now use the identify tool on a record in the Table. Similar to what happens in a
View, this tool brings up a new window with the information about that record.
You should also see the record in the Table and the town in the View “flash”.
Dismiss the window.

i. Make the View your Active Window and select several Towns using the Selection
Tool. Going back to your table, you will see that the corresponding records for
each Town selected in the View have been selected in the Table. In some

25
 instances, you may find that the Promote tool, which brings all selected records to
the top of the table, is useful.

j. You can switch the set of selected records using this tool

k. And Select every record in the whole Table using this tool

l. Before moving on, clear all the selected records.

7. Working with the Tabular Data

a. Sorting your data is a two-step process. First you have to tell Arcview which
attribute you want to sort by. This is done by using the Pointer Tool to point at
the attribute in the Table. You will notice that the column heading darkens.

Now click on the Sort Ascending icon and the data will be in alphabetical order

Clicking on the Sort Descending icon will reverse the order

b. You may find it odd that there are several records for the Town of Barrington.
Other towns, like Bristol and Newport, also have multiple records, while
Coventry only has one record. This is because the coastal towns of Rhode Island
typically have small land masses that are still part of the town even though they
are geographically separate from the mainland. An important part of the GIS is
its ability to keep track of these relationships – after all, you wouldn’t want to
calculate the area of the Town of Portsmouth without including Prudence Island.

c. Arcview can summarize your data for you. First let’s calculate the total area of
each town:

1. Using the pointer tool, highlight the attribute Name in the Table.

26
2. Click on the Summary icon

3. A new window will appear entitled “Summary Table Definition”. In the

Save As box, leave the directory /class2/av101 intact, but change the name
that will be applied to the summary table to something you’ll remember
(e.g. myfirstname.dbf). In the Field box, click on the down arrow and select
Area. In the Summarize By box choose Sum. Click the Add Button, and in
the right hand side of the window you will see Sum-Area. Click OK and a
new Table will open containing your data. Arcview has calculated the area
of each town and, from those towns with the multiple records, added them
for you.

4. See if you can calculate the total population by county on your own (with a
name you will remember as we will use this again soon).

5. Some general statistics are also part of Arcview. Make Population the
highlighted attribute in the Table. Go up to the Menu Bar and Click on
Field. At the bottom you will see Statistics as a choice from the pull down
menu. Click on this and a new window will open giving you a range of
statistics including the Sum, the total Count of records, the Mean, Max. and
Min. of the data, the Range, Variance and Standard Deviation. Click OK to
dismiss the window.

6. By now you may have realized that there is a mistake here. The mistake has
to do with those multiple records for some of the towns. Let’s use
Barrington as an example. Scroll through the Table to Barrington. Every
polygon record for the town of Barrington has a population value of 20,378
associated with it. Thus, in both the summary tables you just created, the
population for the town of Bristol is being counted 13 times. Not what we
really wanted to do!

7. There are a variety of ways to fix this, one of which would be to edit the
table (described below) so that we made the 2 through nn records for each
town population = 0. This would get tedious however, so let’s Merge
Features instead.

8. Clear any selected records, dismiss your summary tables, remove the
highlight from population and make Attributes of Towns your Active
Window.

9. In the Table, click once on Name. Click once on the Summary icon

10. In the Save As box in the new window, replace sum1.dbf with a new name
of your own choosing in your directory leaving the /class2/av101
pathname intact.

27
 11. The default selections in the Field and Summarize By boxes are “Shape”
and “Merge” respectively (if these are not the current selections, select them
now). Click the Add Button so that “Merge_Shape” appears in the right
hand side of the window.

12. Go back to your Field and Summarize By boxes on the left side of the
window. For Field, choose Population and for the Summarize By box
choose Maximum (so we only get one value for each town).

13. Now click add again, then OK, and Arcview will do some cranking. It is
actually creating a new merged Shapefile (Theme) with the attributes you
requested (maximum population). Arcview will ask you which View you
want to place the new shapefile in (the current one or a completely new
one). Go ahead and choose a New View.

14. Arcview will now open both a new View with the merged shapefile and its
corresponding table with the correct number of Towns (39) and the correct
population for each Town. None of the small land masses have disappeared
from the spatial representation of the data, they have just
been grouped together by name.

15. To test this out, turn the new theme on, and select Prudence
Island in your View. Both Prudence Island and the
mainland portion of Middletown will be highlighted.
They’ve been merged according to their name.

8. Editing Tables in Arcview.

a. If you need to correct, update, change, or add information to a Table, you do

have this ability in Arcview.

b. First, open the last summary table you made (Item 4, on page 27) by going
into your Project Window, highlighting it, and then click on the Open
button. Make this the Active Table.

c. You should have three columns (County, Count, and Sum_Population) and
five records (Bristol, Kent, Newport, Providence and Washington).

d. In the Menu Bar, click on Table, then Start Editing. This puts you into Edit
mode.

e. Click on Edit (again in the Menu Bar), then Add Field. A new window will
appear entitled “Field Definition”. This is where you set up the
characteristics of this new Field (attribute). If you were doing this on your
own data you would want to have this well thought out because you can’t
change it once it’s in! You can only delete the field and start over!

28
f. In the box labeled Name, type in “Use” over NewField1. In the box labeled
Type, choose “String” (for text information as opposed to numeric
information). In the box labeled width, type in 50 (for 50 characters long).

g. Click the OK button and you will see the new field (attribute) Use has been
added to your Table.

h. Your Table should now look like this:

i. Click on your Editing Tool

j. Type in the following uses for each record so your Table looks like this:

Note:
When you enter swimming
on the last line, make sure
to hit the Enter Key.
Otherwise, Arcview won’t
capture it.

k. When you have finished, go to Table in the Menu Bar, and on the pull down
menu, select Stop Editing. Arcview will ask you if you want to save your
changes. Click yes. You will now be kicked out of edit mode.

29
 Note also that you have a couple other choices in the Table pull down menu….to simply
Save Changes while leaving you in edit mode; and Save Edits As which will allow you to
save the changes to a table named something else.

To digress to metadata once again…..while you and I know that the attribute Use
refers to the most common activity that goes on in each County, someone from
California will have no idea what it means. So, when you get to the point of
documenting data sets that you create in a GIS, it will be important for you to
include this information. On this same note, when you get data from someone or
somewhere else, you should always try to get the metadata that goes with the
theme, coverage or shapefile. Otherwise you may not know what the data really
mean.

9. Linking Tables in Arcview

a. In Arcview, two Tables can be linked together temporarily so that you can
establish a one-to-one or a one-to-many relationship.

b. An example of a one to many relationship where you might want to link two
tables together is building occupancy. One building in a theme called
Buildings, may contain many tenants. In Arcview, if you have a source
table (database) of tenants (name of store, when they last paid their rent,
when their next rent payment is due) and a theme representing all the
buildings you own, you could link the table of tenants to the table of the
Buildings theme. Then if you select a particular building in your View, it
will highlight the record in the building theme table, as well as highlighting
the tenants that occupy that building from your source table.

c. The most important thing in Linking tables is that each table must have a
Common Identifier – an attribute that is the same for both tables. In our
case, the Common Identifier is the attribute County.

d. Once again, make the summary table you just edited to include “Use” your
Active Table.

e. Using the pointer tool, highlight the attribute County.

f. Now make the table Attributes of Towns your Active Table, and using the
pointer tool, highlight the attribute County in this table.

g. On the Menu Bar, select Link from the Table pull down menu.

h. At first it won’t seem as though anything has happened, but now use your
pointer tool and select the Town of Hopkinton in the Attributes of Towns
table (You will have to scroll down a bit). You will see a corresponding

30
 record highlighted in the summary table, and in your View, the Town will
also be highlighted.

i. Now clear the selected records from each table, and then make your View
window active. Use your selection tool to select several towns. You will
see that records in both tables will be highlighted.

j. When you’re finished exploring Links, make your Table windows active,
clear any selected records from both tables, then go to the Menu Bar, Table,
and Remove All Links.

10. Joining Tables in Arcview

a. Arcview also allows you to Join tables based on a Common Identifier.

Joining is used to establish one-to-one or many-to-one relationships.

b. An example of a many-to-one relationship would be many wetland

polygons in a wetland theme. Each wetland is coded (has an attribute)
which contains a value of Type (e.g. scrub-shrub, forested deciduous,
emergent, etc.). If you have an independent source table that contains the
primary bird species for each wetland type, you can join the tables, and the
wetland theme attribute table would be populated with the primary bird
species for that wetland.

Attributes of Wetlands (many polygon records)

Database of Bird Species with Common Identifier attribute of Type (one value for
each type of wetland)

31
Joined Table where Type is populated with species based on a common identifier,
“Type”.

c. Now try it out…the process is basically the same as the link. Make the
summary table (the one which includes the attribute Use) your Active
Table. Using the pointer tool, highlight the attribute County. Now make
the table Attributes of Towns your Active Table, and using the pointer tool,
highlight the attribute County in this table.

d. On the Menu Bar, select Join (instead of Link) from the Table pull
down menu. OR Arcview gives you an icon in the Button Bar for this
one. The source table will be dismissed, and your table Attributes of
Towns will now contain the fields from the other table, including Use.

e. Now you can symbolize, label, query and analyze the theme using the data
from your source table. Make the View your Active Window. Edit your
legend (remember how?!). Choose Unique Value for your legend type, and
Use for your Values field. You’ll now be mapping the state by the attribute
Use. Dismiss the legend editor.

f. When you save your Arcview project, the definition of the join is written
out so that when the project is started again, the joins are re-established.

g. You would not want to establish a join in the example of buildings to

tenants, because the join would only find the first tenant of the building and
ignore the others.

h. To remove joins, make the table active, go to Table in the Menu Bar, and
Remove All Joins.

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11. Adding Pre-existing Tables

a. If you have a spreadsheet that contains lots of useful data from a project you
are working on, you can add this table to your Arcview project.

b. First, from your spreadsheet program (Access, Lotus, Quattro Pro, Excel)
you must save your spreadsheet as a dBase format file (.dbf).

c. Then, in Arcview, in your Project Window highlight the Table icon, and
then click on the Add Button.

d. A new window will open, asking you to select the table you wish to add. In
our case, add the file named register.dbf from the /class2/av101 directory.

e. This file came from an Access database. If we had a spatial database of

point locations for the buildings on campus, I could now edit this table to
include a common identifier, and link or join you to the building you work
in. Then when I came to install Arcview on your computer, I could find you
easily.

12. Changing How Your Tables Look

a. Annoyed at having to see extraneous information in your Table like Town#,

Town-ID, Mcd, and other attributes that just clutter things up?

b. Make the Attributes of Towns your Active Table again, and then go to
Table in the Menu Bar, and select Properties from the pull down menu.

c. A new window will open entitled Table Properties. In the bottom of this
window you will see a column called Visible with check marks in it.

33
 d. By default, Arcview will turn every attribute on in your table. Now
uncheck Town#, Town-ID, Mcd, and Cfps and then click OK. You’ll see
your table change to exclude these attributes. They are still in the table, but
they are just not visible.

e. If you go back and re-open Table Properties, you can also change the
headings for your attributes. So, for those “cryptic” headings like Osp, in
the Alias box, type State Planning. Then click OK, and instead of Osp,
State Planning will appear as your heading. You may have to re-size the
width of the column for it to show completely.

f. This capability can be very useful if you have a table with so many
attributes that you can’t see them all on the screen or if you want to include
only specific portions of your table on your LAYOUT (we’ll be making
Layouts on Friday).

13. Making Charts from Data in Your Table

a. Arcview can create some basic charts from data contained within your Table.
These include line charts, bar charts, and pie charts.

b. The theme Rhode Island Towns isn’t the best one to use for this, so let’s
change to something else.

c. First, we’ll get rid of Rhode Island Towns and any other Themes currently in
your View. Go to your View window, make Towns your Active Theme, and
then take a look at the choices available in the Edit pull down menu. You can
Cut Themes which removes the theme from the current View and places it on
the Clipboard. You can Copy Themes which leaves the theme in the current
View but makes a copy on the Clipboard. If a theme is on the Clipboard it
can be Pasted into a new View. This comes in very handy when you want a
new View with the same themes but you don’t want to have to do Add Theme
over and over again. If multiple themes are Active (Hold down the shift key
while pointing at the theme name in the Legend) all of them will be cut or
copied to the Clipboard.

d. Choose Delete Themes and a window will come up asking you to confirm that
you want to get rid of Towns. Say yes. Close your Table too.

e. Now Add a Theme called states.shp from the /class2/av101/usa directory and
turn in on.

f. Open it’s Table.

34
g. Click on the column attribute heading State_Name. This will be the X-Axis
of our chart.

h. Open the Chart Properties window using the Chart icon

i. In this window, change the Name of the chart to something that you’ll
remember. The Table box has already been filled in with the default Table
you are getting the data from. In the Fields window, select Pop1990, and
click the Add button so it appears in the right side. In the Label Series box,
select State_name.

j. When you click OK, Arcview will create a bar chart of the 1990 US
population by state.

k. At first this doesn’t look so good. If you resize your window things may look
a little better but chances are there are still too many states to fit in the
Legend. So let’s change things around.

l. Instead of a vertical bar chart, change it to a horizontal chart, and from

the Bar Chart Gallery, accept the default

m. Then choose the toggle icon to switch your x and y axes and things
should be looking a bit better.

n. Depending on your data, you can also create:

1. Area Graphs 3. Pie Charts

2. Line Graphs 4. Scatter Graphs

o. Add a title to your graph by clicking once on the Chart Element Properties
icon in the Tool Bar, then moving your cursor (an arrow) into the chart and
pointing at the word ‘title’. In the new window that pops up you can enter a
title and, by pointing at different spots around the chart, you can place the
title.

p. Change the color of elements in your chart by clicking on the Paintbrush

icon and when the color palette opens, clicking again on the paintbrush.
Choose your favorite color and then move the cursor onto the chart. Click on
the chart elements one at a time….the bars, the title, the axes, and they will
change to the selected color.

35
 q. On your own, try playing around with the Chart Properties icon. See if you
can add tick marks and labels to your chart. This is a good time to check out
your help files if you haven’t already. The topic in the index would be Charts.

r. Now close your chart, but notice how the name has been added to your list of
charts in your project window.

14. Creating Hot Links in Arcview

a. This feature of Arcview lets you link a feature in a view (a point, line, or
polygon) to an image such as a CAD drawing, aerial photograph, or other
items such as text files.

b. For example, a biologist can create a map of a study area where he/she has
encountered several types of animals at different point locations throughout
that study area. When a hot link is made, in the View, the biologist / new
GIS expert(!) can point to the location on the map, and a photograph of the
animal will pop up.

c. Similarly, an engineer might have a line coverage (theme) of water pipes.

He/she could hot link that coverage so that when a particular pipe was
clicked on in the View, it would bring up a CAD drawing that had been
scanned into the system.

36
 d. Well, I don’t have digital photos of animals or CAD drawings. But I do
have digital orthophotographs for the whole state. So we’ll hot link the City
of Providence to one of these images.

e. First, open an entirely new View.

f. Add the theme Providence.shp to the View (/class2/av101/rhodeisland

directory).

g. Open it’s table.

h. Note the column heading (attribute) Photo and that the value is the filename
of /class2/av101/provse.gif. This is the filename of the photo that you are
going to link to the shapefile record.

i. Make your View your Active Window, make Providence.shp your Active
Theme, and open the Theme’s Properties.

j. On the left side of the window, scroll down to Hot Link and click on it.

k. In the first scrolling box entitled Field, choose Photo, and in the scroll box
entitled Predefined Action, choose Link to Image. Click OK.

l. Turn on the Providence.shp theme, and then click on the Hot Link icon.
(Normally this icon is grayed out, but once you have defined a link in the
Theme Properties it becomes available). Move the cursor (now a lightening
flash) into the View and click somewhere on the polygon that represents the
City of Providence.

m. This is a very large image (almost 50 MB), so it will take about 2 minutes to
load. Don’t worry if nothing happens right away. When it loads, you’ll see
the Upper Providence River on your right, Fields Point, the lower part of
Pawtuxet River, and the Roger Williams Park Ponds.

n. You can resize this window to see more of photo (redrawing also takes a bit
of time).

o. Dismiss this window.

15. Images as Themes

a. In Arcview, an image file such as a TIF, BMP, JPG or BIL (band interleave
format) can be opened as a Theme in a View just like a point, line or polygon
theme (coverage).

37
b. Let’s try this out with the same image we hot linked.

c. Make the View window your Active Window, and click on the Add Theme
icon.

d. When the Add Theme window opens, you will see a choice box in the lower
left hand corner of the window entitled Data Source Type.

e. From the scrolling list, select Image Data Source instead of Feature data
source.

f. The file provse.bil should now be a choice to select in the left hand pane of the
window.

g. Select this and click OK. The image will be loaded into your legend. You can
turn it on, and the image will draw.

h. This file is called a digital orthophotograph. This means two things:

• it is geo-referenced to ground control points so that you can take

measurements and get geographic coordinates from it, and you can digitize
new themes right on top of it; We will learn how to do this later.

• Some of the distortion that results from the tilt of the plane that is taking the
photograph, and from the curvature of the earth, has been removed.

i. Add the theme Towns back into your View and turn it on. You can see that the
photograph falls into the correct coordinate space. Or vice-versa, that the theme
falls into the correct coordinate space.

j. TIFF, CAD, and JPEG files require an extra step to be recognized in Arcview.

1. Make your Project Window the Active Window

2. From the Menu Bar, choose File, then select Extensions

3. This will open up a new Window in which you will see a list of special
programs called Extensions that enhance the functionality of Arcview.

4. To make TIFF, CAD, or JPEG files visible as supported Arcview

image formats, you have to check the boxes next to TIFF Image
Support, CAD Reader, or JPEG Image Support, depending on which
image type you wish to use.

5. Then, when you go to Add Theme, any files with the .TIF, .DXF, .JPG
formats will be listed when you select Image Data Source.

38
Practice the things you have learned so far to re-create the following project on your own.

39
 Working with Map Projections

1. What is a Map Projection?

a. A mathematical formula that converts the three dimensional sphere of the

earth into a two dimensional, non-spherical representation.

b. In other words, taking the round earth and flattening it out on a piece of
paper or computer screen so that every location on the earth is represented
by an x-coordinate, y-coordinate pair.

c. Having coordinates of a location is the basis for the computer’s ability to

measure distances and calculate areas.

d. There are many, many different mathematical formulas for projecting the
earth’s surface to a flat plane. Fortunately, the computer does the math for
us.

e. Whenever you represent the earth, or even a portion of the earth (i.e. the
State of Rhode Island) as a flat surface, some distortions in distance, area,
shape and direction are created. There is no perfect projection, and that is
why there are so many of them. Many people have tried different formulas
to reduce the distortions depending on their particular needs.

f. Fortunately, since Rhode Island is a very small geographic area, the

distortions caused by projections are also very small.

g. The primary things you need to be aware of as an end user of Arcview 3.2
are these:

♣ If you add one theme to a View that is in one projection and a second theme
that covers the same geographic area, but is in a different projection, they will
not align properly. In many cases, the second theme will not even show up in
your View.

♣ Data from the RIGIS database is in the projection known as State Plane Feet,
North American Datum (NAD) 83.

♣ If you get GIS data from other agencies, organizations, or people, always find
out either directly or through the metadata what the projection is! With this
information, you can use Arcview to change it if necessary to line up with the
RIGIS data.

40
 Rhode Island in State Plane Feet Rhode Island in Decimal Degrees

2. Projections Using Arcview 3.2

a. The Unix version of Arcview 3.2 has limited capabilities to handle different
projections. The Windows version of Arcview 3.2 has more functionality,
although it is not particularly useful because it is very slow.

b. When your know that the geographic data your are working with in your View
are in decimal degrees, Arcview can project the entire View to any number of
different projections that the software supports.

1. Open an entirely new View, and add the Theme States.shp from the
/class2/av101/usa directory.

2. Arcview will detect that this theme is in decimal degrees. You can check
this by going to the Menu Bar, View, Properties. Your map units should
read decimal degrees and your distance units should read miles. If they
don’t choose these selections.

3. Note how the theme looks in the View.

4. Return to View, Properties and note that the current projection is none.

5. Click on the Projection Button.

6. In Category choose State Plane – 1983.

41
 7. In Type, choose Rhode Island.

8. Click OK

9. Back in the View Properties Window, change your map units to feet and
your distance to miles. Click OK again.

10. Arcview will project the entire View into State Plane Feet.

11. Let’s try another one: Back in your View, Properties, Projection window,
choose Projections of the United States for the category and Equidistanct
Conic (coterminous US) for the Type. Click OK (two times) and see how
the representation differs.

12. Go ahead and try some on your own! This will give a feel for how the
different projections change the shapes of things. Also try to measure a
couple distances, say from the same place on the coast of CA, to the same
place on the coast of RI in different projections to see how large the change
is between distances.

13. Here’s a neat one – in category choose Projections of the World, and for
type choose The World from Space. Click OK, then Add the theme
World30.shp from the usa directory.

14. Zoom all the way out to the full extent and you’ll see what the US might
look like if you were in the shuttle!

c. When your data are not in decimal degrees you don’t have so many choices.
Your View cannot be projected. Only your data can be projected, and only if
you know what it’s existing projection is.

1. This requires an extension. Go to File, Extensions, and put a check mark

next to Projector!

2. In your Button Bar, the Projector Icon will appear

3. Open an entirely new View and add the Towns theme from the rhodeisland
directory. Set the map units to meters and distance units to feet. We can do
this because we already know that this particular data set is in a projection
called UTM meters.

4. If you hit the Projection Button that you used before you would get an error
message telling you that Arcview cannot project the data because it is not in
decimal degrees!

42
 5. To change the projection of the data (not the View) click on the Projector
Icon. Arcview will ask you to enter the input projection.

6. A new window will appear asking you again to define the current
projection. In category, choose UTM – 1927.

7. In Type, choose Zone 19 (this is for Rhode Island)

8. In the next window that appears you enter what you wish to change it to. In
this case let’s go with feet.

9. The projection properties window will appear again. This time choose State
Plane 1983 for the category and Rhode Island for the type.

10. Click OK. Arcview will ask if you wish to correct for measurement units.
Click Yes. Also tell it to add it to a View, and choose New View.

11. If you are not in your own directory at this time, navigate to it in the right
hand window pane, create a file name for your new data set, and click OK.

12. Arcview will crank away, then add the new theme to your new view. Turn
it on. You won’t see much if any difference between Rhode Island in UTM
vs. Rhode Island in State Plane Feet because geographically it is so small an
area.

13. However, in this View, add the original Towns theme from the rhodeisland
directory and turn it on. You will not see it because the two themes, even
though they represent the exact same geographic area, are in two different
projections.

14. Zoom out to the Full Extent of both themes and see what happens!

A Note About NADs – If you overlay two themes that are in the same projection but
they are off by about 40 – 50 feet, they are probably in different NADs. North American
Datum 1927 (NAD27) is a single point somewhere in Kansas that was designated in 1927
as the central point of the United States from which all other places would be measured.
This was the best we could do in 1927, but it doesn’t account for variations in the
topography of the earth’s surface, so it is not very exact.

In 1983 a new standard was adopted, NAD83, which measures all places in the United
States from the calculated center of the earth, so for any given location on the earth’s
surface, there is a more accurate representation between two points. Most data are now
in NAD83.

If you find two themes that are supposed to be in the same geographic location, but are
off by about 40 – 50 feet in any direction, chances are they are in different NADs.

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 Chapter Three
Querying Data and Spatial Relationships

1. Working with Query Statements

a. A query statement is a logical statement, which in Arcview, is used to select

features from themes, coverages, or shapefiles, and records from Tables. A
simple query statement consists of a field name, and operator, and a value.

State_name = Hawaii

b. In Arcview query statements are built using the Query Tool icon

c. You may have noticed this icon already, as it is available as a tool for both
Views and Tables.

d. Let’s work with some different data for this exercise. Open Arcview with an
empty project.

e. To your View, add the following themes from the /class2/arcview101/usa

directory: states.shp, lakes.shp, and cities.shp.

f. You may have to change the drawing order so states.shp draws first, followed by
lakes, and then cities.

g. Turn on the states and lakes themes, but for now leave cities off.

h. Make lakes.shp the Active Theme and open it’s Table.

i. Click once on the Query Tool Icon. A new window will open entitled lakes.shp.

j. This is where you build your query statement, and it can be a bit tricky as
Arcview places brackets and parentheses in different places, and if it’s not just
right you’ll get a syntax error message!

44
k. First, let’s select Lake Michigan.

1. Move your cursor into the Fields window and click TWICE on [Name].
This is your FIELD.
2. As soon as you do this, Arcview will populate the right hand side of the
window, Values, with data from the Table for that attribute.
3. Click ONCE on the Equals sign. This is your OPERATOR.
4. Click TWICE on Lake Michigan in the Values window. This is your
VALUE.

l. Your Window should now look like this:

m. Now click on the New Set Button – you are making a new Selected Set.

45
n. Arcview will highlight the correct Lake in the View, and the correct record in
the Table.

o. Now let’s add another lake to our selected set:

1. In the lower left hand box of the Query box where it now says ([Name] =
“Lake Michigan”), move your cursor and, as in a word processor, highlight
the query statement and delete it. You want an empty box here.
2. As before, Click twice on Name, once on the equals sign, and twice on Lake
Erie.
3. Now click on the Add to Set button in the lower right hand corner.
4. Both Lake Michigan and Lake Erie should now be highlighted – you’ve just
added Lake Erie to the selected set.

p. Move your cursor up to your Button Bar, and use the Clear Select icon to clear
the selected records.

q. Make the Table your Active Window, and use the Select All records icon

r. All Lakes in your View and Table will be highlighted.

s. Erase ([Name] = “Lake Erie”) from the box and generate a statement to select
Lake Michigan again.

t. Now choose the Select From Set button in the lower right hand corner, and
Arcview will choose Lake Michigan from all the others.

u. How about two at a time?

1. Clear your window and generate ([Name] = “Lake Michigan”),

then click once on the OR button. Then click TWICE on Name,
once on equals, and TWICE on Lake Huron.

2. You are telling Arcview to select any records where the Field Name has the
value Lake Michigan or Lake Huron. Both lakes will be highlighted once
you click New Set.

46
3. Be careful with the operator AND. You cannot select a record that has
Name = “Lake Michigan” AND Name = “Lake Huron”; each Lake only
has one name.

4. You can use wild cards: Name = “Lake *h* ” should get all Lakes with
names that contain an “h”.

5. The not operator is a bit different in syntax. In this case, you want your
selected set not to include one of the lakes. You could go through the lakes
one by one and generate a lengthy or query statement. However, chances
are the syntax will be wrong somewhere, so it is easier to use the not
operator.

6. Make sure you’ve cleared any existing selected records, then in your query
statement box, choose the not operator first. Then click twice on Name,
once on =, then twice on Lake Michigan.

47
 7. In this case you will have selected everything but Lake Michigan (they
should be highlighted in your View).

v. Experiment for awhile until you feel comfortable with generating query
statements. Try out the following……

1. Make Cities your active theme and turn it on.

2. Open the query builder for this theme and practice building statements with
the other operators that exist for numeric values: >, < , etc.

2. That OTHER Query Builder

a. At the beginning of this lesson, I mentioned that the Query Builder tool is
available for both Views and Tables, and indeed, if you look at the Button Bar
for either document type, the icon is there.

b. Now I’m going to show you where a THIRD Query Builder tool is, because
even though the icon is the same, the outcome is significantly different.

c. Start by clearing any existing selected records, and turning off all themes except
Lakes.shp.

d. Make Lakes.shp your Active Theme.

e. Now in the Menu Bar, choose Theme, then Properties.

f. You’ll recall the new window that comes up from the first day of class.

g. See the Query Builder icon under the heading Definition?

h. Click on the icon, and the familiar building window will open.

i. Build a query statement again to make Lake Michigan your selected record.

j. Hit the OK button and then you will see that the statement has appeared in the
Definition box.

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 k. Now hit OK and look at your View. And here’s the difference - instead of Lake
Michigan turning yellow to show you that it is simply a selected record, all the
lakes except Lake Michigan have disappeared.

l. What you have done is defined that the theme Lakes only consists of that one
Lake!

m. From now on, any process you do with Lakes as your Active Theme will only
work on this one record. For example, open the table of the Lakes theme. You
will only see Lake Michigan.

n. You haven’t lost the other records, but you’ve defined that, for this theme, only
Lake Michigan is pertinent.

o. To get the others back, bring back your Theme Properties window and hit the
Clear Button, then the OK button.

p. All your records will reappear!

3. Advanced Selections Using Distances, Containment, and Intersections

a. Now let’s start exploring the real power of the GIS. First, close everything
down without saving anything and open a new Arcview project, with an entirely
new View.

49
b. Add the following themes from the /class2/av101/rhodeisland directory: towns,
streams, villages, and basins. Turn them on.

c. If it happens that any of your themes come up with a yellow color, use your
legend editor (remember?) to change it to a different color (I want to make sure
you can see the selections we’re going to do!).

d. If necessary, also change your drawing order so that all the themes are visible.

e. Set your map units and distance units to meters (remember how?!)

1. Distances

a. Let’s establish the following scenario – we are biologists trying to find a

good stream in which to re-establish a population of trout. The first
thing we know is that the stream has to have good water quality, so it
should be at least 500 meters away from any villages where there are
high concentrations of people who pollute the water with runoff from
their cars, lawns, septic systems, etc.

b. Since we are asking a question about Streams, make this your Active
Theme.

c. In the Menu Bar, choose Theme, and from the Pull Down menu, choose
Select By Theme.

d. A new window will come up entitled “Select By Theme”. What we are

doing is selecting features from our Active Theme that are based on a
relationship with another theme, in this case Villages.

e. Arcview is a little quirky here….go to the second box and choose

Villages. In the first box, choose Are Within Distance Of, and where it
says Selection Distance, enter 500.

f. Click on New Set, and in your View, you will see that all streams within
a distance of 500 meters of a village are highlighted.

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 g. We are presuming that these streams are probably somewhat polluted,
so we’re not interested in these. Remember how to Switch your selected
set? Hint – Open the Streams’ Table.

h. Now you have all streams that are beyond 500 meters of a village.

2. Containment

a. We want to make sure that these streams are likely to stay clean, so
now we only want to find streams that are in a watershed that is not
going to be subjected to a lot of development. We know that the
Scituate Reservoir watershed is going to remain protected because it is
a drinking water supply watershed and the City and the State are both
serious about keeping the water clean.

b. So let’s find just those streams that are contained within the Scituate
Reservoir watershed basin.

c. First, we have to single out that basin. Make Basins your Active
Theme, then using the Theme Properties query tool, make it so your
View shows ONLY the Scituate Reservoir subbasin.

d. Now make Streams your Active Theme again (you should still have a
selected set of streams).

e. Open Theme, Select By Theme.

f. In the second box, choose Basins; in the first box, choose Are
Completely Within.

g. Now, choose the Select from Set button.

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 h. Your current selected set is just those streams that are at least 500
meters away from any villages and are within the Scituate Reservoir
subbasin.

3. Intersections

a. Since we don’t want to have to carry the baby trout we are re-introducing a
long distance, we can now use the GIS to help us find those streams that
intersect a road.

b. Add the theme Majroads to your View an turn it on.

c. Zoom in to the extent of the Scituate Reservoir subbasin using any of your
zoom tools.

d. With Streams again being your Active Theme, open the Select By Theme
dialog box.

e. Choose Majroads as the theme and Intersect as the process (it may already
be the default).

f. And, once again, choose the Select From Set button.

g. Now you have unpolluted streams in the Scituate Reservoir subbasin that
intersect with a road, and are more than 500 meters from a village.

There are other choices within these menus. Take awhile and experiment with them!

4. Creating Buffer Zones

a. Let’s change roles – instead of biologists we are now disaster preparedness planners.
We are writing a plan to evacuate schools in the event of a spill at a hazardous waste
site. The first schools we want to evacuate are those that are within a one mile
radius of the sites and we need to identify which they are.

b. Open a new View and add the themes hazmat and schools. Turn them on.

c. Make hazmat your Active Theme.

d. Go to Theme. At the bottom of the menu you will see a choice to create buffers. It
will be grayed out. Any thoughts as to why you cannot use it yet? Hint – What does
Arcview have to know to measure distances in miles?

e. Once you recall this preliminary step, go back in the Menu Bar, Select Theme, and
you will now have a choice to Create Buffers. Go ahead and select this.

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 f. A new window will open asking you what you want to buffer. Select the radio
button for The Features of a Theme; the default is the Active Theme which
should be hazmat.

g. Click the Next Button.

h. Arcview will ask us how to create the buffers. For now we want to stick with
“At a specified distance”. However, take note of your other options for future
reference.

• For example, if our hazmat theme had an attribute that was a

quantitative expression of toxicity based on the chemicals present, we
might want to assign buffer distances based on toxicity. In this case, we
would select the second choice in this window to use the attribute as the
basis for the buffer distance.

i. For now, type 1 in the At a Specified Distance box and click the Next button.

j. Accept the default in the next window to dissolve barriers between buffers, but
at the bottom, choose to make a new shapefile, and give it a name of your
choosing in your directory such as

/class2/av101/yourname /hazbuff.shp

Click Finish and Arcview will carry on from here. When it is done, you will have a new
theme added to your View. As a check, zoom in to an area and use your measure tool to
measure the distance from one of the sites out to the edge of the circle. If all went well,
this should be one mile!

k. Zoom back out to a full View. Now you are ready to use the Select By Theme
process that you learned above to select the Schools that fall Completely Within
this buffer theme. Go ahead and do this.

l. Once you’ve selected the schools, open that theme’s Table. Promote the
selected records to the top

m. Now export these selected records to a new dBase file.

1. On the Menu Bar, choose File, then Export.

2. Arcview will ask you which format you wish – choose dBase.

3. Click OK and then, if you are not in your directory already,

navigate there, and save the file as something you will remember
(we’ll be using this file again).

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 4. You now have an exported spreadsheet that you can pull into
another software program, for example, Excel.

Introducing the Geoprocessing Wizard

a. Geoprocessing is Arcview lingo for the collection of methods which are used to
create new themes from existing ones. These methods include clips,
intersections, dissolves, unions, and merges. You may recall that we already
did a merge yesterday, when we made all the small land masses of the Towns
theme merge together according to their name so that we could accurately
compute population.

b. Clips create a new theme by using a polygon theme (or selected polygons in that
theme) as a cookie cutter on a point, line, or polygon theme. The output theme
will only contain data from the theme you're clipping--the theme used as a
cookie cutter is only used to define the clipping boundary. You might use the
boundary of your study area to clip a theme of roads or customers that extends
over a much larger area.

1. Open a new View, Add the Themes Towns and Villages, and turn them on.

2. Notice how the Villages theme contains some Villages outside the State of
Rhode Island.

3. We can use a Clip to create a new Theme that only contains Villages inside
the Towns of Rhode Island.

4. First we have to tell Arcview that we wish to use the Geoprocessing

Wizard. This is an Extension which you need to add. Recall how you
added the CAD Reader, TIFF and JPEG image support as extensions? Hint
– Your Project Window has to be the Active Window.

5. Once you’ve added this extension, the Geoprocessing Wizard will be

available as a choice in your View pull down menu.

6. A new window will open, which will give you a variety of geoprocessing
choices. These choices are based on the theme features Arcview finds in
your View (points, lines, and/or polygon themes).

54
 7. Choose the Clip radio button and in the right hand side of the window you
will see a graphic demonstration of what will happen and if you click on
More About Clip you will get a full description.

8. Click on the Next Button to proceed.

9. In #1, the Input Theme is the Theme that we are going to alter – in this
case we are going to alter Villages because we want to eliminate those
points that fall outside the towns of Rhode Island.

10. The polygon overlay theme is our clipping theme – the “cookie cutter” – in
this case, Towns. Clipping themes always have to be polygons!

11. In #3, navigate to your own directory, and create a name of your choosing
for the new theme that is going to be created. Once again, the name you
choose should be something descriptive that you will remember such as

/class2/av101/yourname/rivillages
or
/class2/av101/yourname/villageclip

12. Once you hit the Finish Button, Arcview will do the processing. Depending
on the complexity of the themes (and how fast your computer is!) the
amount of time it takes to complete the process will vary.

13. When it is done, a new theme will be added to your View. Go ahead and
turn it on and you will see that it now contains only those Villages that are
within the Towns of Rhode Island.

14. For practice, do this same procedure, only clip out the Basins theme instead
using Towns as the clipping theme.

c. Intersections also create a new theme. In this case, however, the features
(polygons) from both themes, as well as the attributes from both themes are
placed in this new theme.

1. Make the original Basins theme Active, and return to your

geoprocessing wizard.

2. Select the Intersect radio button, and then the Next button.

3. In box one, choose Basins, and in box two, choose Towns. In box
three, again navigate to your directory if you are not already there, and
select an original name.

55
 4. Choose finish, and wait for Arcview to place a new theme into your
View.

5. You will see that this new theme has polygons from both Towns and
Basins. If you do an Identify on one of the polygons, you will see that
your attributes include those from both tables.

6. With this new theme, you could now do operations such as illustrating
watersheds by towns, or charting the area of each watershed within a
given Town.

7. The difference between an intersection and a union, which we will look

at below, is that an intersection only keeps the features that are
common to both themes. Thus, the geographic portions of the
watersheds that fall outside the geographic area of the Towns has been
eliminated. In a union, nothing is discarded.

d. Dissolve removes boundaries between adjacent polygons or lines that have the
same values for a specified attribute.

1. Make the last theme (your intersected theme) Active.

2. With the View as your Active Window, develop a query statement and
select Basin = Blackstone River.
3. Open its Table, and Promote the selected records to the top.
4. Note in the Table how there are several Subbasins which are part of the
Blackstone Basin; the Chepachet, the Branch, the Clear, and the
Blackstone Rivers each eventually lead to the Blackstone River.
5. Dissolve will remove the individual polygons of each watershed into
one – Go ahead and test it out!

e. Union is used when you want to produce a new theme containing the features
and attributes of two polygon themes. Unlike the Intersection process above,
this method will retain all geographic and all tabular data in the new theme.

1. Go ahead and try this with Basins and Towns.

2. When you are done, if you don’t intially see the difference between the
intersect and the union, you can turn them both on and off. You’ll see
that, in the unioned theme, the basins that extend into Massachusetts
have been retained, while in the intersected theme, those basins were
eliminated.

3. Your project, the information you need, and how you need to display it
will determine which of these methods you use at any given time. The

56
 important thing to remember is that the combinations are almost
limitless!

6. Methods for Creating Your Own GIS Datasets

1. Digitizing from Original Source Material

a. If you have access to paper maps or aerial photographs, geographic features

can be digitized from these into a GIS. This is how 90% of Rhode Island’s
baseline data layers were generated. The process is beyond the scope of
this workshop, but suffice to say that it is one of the most traditional and
common ways of developing original GIS data. It requires a digitizing
board.

2. Using Global Positioning Systems

a. These devices are a new standard for developing original, highly accurate
GIS coverages without the tedium of digitizing. GPS units that are
specifically designed to interface with GIS collect, record, and export
geographic coordinates and attributes directly into shapefile or coverage
formats.

3. Utilizing Tables or Spreadsheets

a. You may have located the geographic coordinates of various point features
by a topographic map or some other means. You can create a new point
theme based on these data.

b. Let’s say you entered the locations of water quality monitoring stations into
Excel, Access or some other database software package, and exported the
file to dBase format as watermon.dbf (in the rhodeisland directory).

c. Add this Table to your Project (remember how?). You will see that this
table has a series of x,y coordinate pairs along with an attribute of depth.

d. Create an entirely new View and make the View window the Active
Window.

e. Next, go to the Menu Bar, View, and Add Event Theme. A new window
will open. For Table, select the watermon.dbf table you just added. The x
and y fields will fill in automatically. If your x and y columns had been
named something different you would have to tell Arcview which columns
to use.

f. Click OK and Arcview will create a new temporary file in your View from
these coordinates called watermon.dbf.

57
g. Make this file Active and then convert it to a shapefile in your directory
with some unique name. Add it to the View and then delete watermon.dbf
from the View.

h. You have just created a new geographic database! If you open the
shapefiles’ table, you will see that the attribute information of depth has
been retained.

i. To ensure it is in the correct geographic space, let’s compare it to a

georeferenced image by learning how to use the MIT Orthophoto Browser.

j. First project the View to State Plane Feet, NAD 83, Rhode Island (hint:
View, Properties). We can do this because our data is in decimal degrees.

k. You may need help here as we are entering UNIX land so don’t hesitate to
ask for help…..

l. Go to an xterm window and type “netscape” to start the web browser. Go

to the bookmark called MIT Orthophoto.

m. These water quality monitoring stations are in Prince Pond, which is in

Bristol. Let me know when you reach this point and I will show you where
to zoom in.

n. Once we’ve zoomed into the most reasonable geographic extent, go to the
top of the page where it says Download Options and click on this button.

o. You will be presented with a table of several different ways to save the
image you zoomed in on. For now go to GeoTiff, 3.2 x 3.2 foot pixels.

p. To download in Unix you have to hold the shift key down, then hit the first
mouse button. A new window will appear. In the bottom box that says
Selection, backspace up to the first slash and then rename the file to
something unique; include the file extension .tif.

q. Exit netscape (File, Exit) and go back to Arcview. Add the image as a
theme (you may have to turn on your tif image support extension if you
don’t see the image file).

r. Turn the image on and make it the first thing to draw. The water quality
monitoring stations should fall into the correct place on the image.

4. You have just used the MIT orthophoto browser located at the
University of Rhode Island to get a specific portion of an image as
opposed to having the entire image. This technique saves considerable

58
 disk space as these image are very large.

4. Heads Up Digitizing from GeoReferenced Images

a. Close any Views and Tables you have open at this time, and open a brand
new View.

b. Add the theme provse.bil to the View and turn it on. (Remember to change
your Data Source Type to Image Data Source!).

c. Recall that, since this is an orthophotograph, it has been georeferenced to

control points on the ground; a relationship has been established between
the images rows and columns and a real world coordinate system (e.g.
latitude/longitude). This means that when you digitize features using the
image as a backdrop, your features will also be georeferenced to this same
real world coordinate system.

Although it is beyond the scope of this workshop, I want to let you know that it is
possible to scan almost any photograph, georeference it, and digitize features.

d. Zoom in to a place on the photograph of your choosing. Zoom in far

enough so that you can see buildings, but not so far that the edges become
pixelated.

e. You are going to create a new coverage (theme) called Buildings. First, go
to View in your Menu Bar, and choose New Theme.

f. When the window comes up, you need to select the type of theme it is going
to be. Buildings can be represented as points or polygons. The purpose of
your project will ultimately dictate how you wish this theme to be
represented. In this case, I want you to practice digitizing, so we will be
outlining the footprints of several buildings as polygons. Make this your
choice in “feature type”.

g. Choose OK, and Arcview will ask you to assign the theme a name. Select
something unique that you will remember and make sure it is in your own
directory.

h. In your legend you now have a new theme, and that the check box has a
dashed line around it.

This means you are in edit mode and can begin digitizing.

59
i. Since you are going to be drawing a many sided polygon, not a rectangle,
you need to select the Polygon Tool from your tool box. This tool is in the
pull down menu adjacent to the text tool.

j. Now move your cursor into the View. Start at the corner of any Building
and click once. Move the cursor to the next corner and click once.
Continue this, outlining the footprint of the building until you are back at
the original corner. Click twice to finish the polygon.

k. Repeat this for several buildings until you feel comfortable with digitizing.

l. Next let’s change the footprint of a building. Say you made a mistake while
digitizing and you just want to edit one vertex without having to do the
whole building again.

m. Select one of the building footprints you just made by pointing at it with the
pointer tool.

n. Click on the Vertex Edit tool in the Tool Bar

o. Now in your View, hold the cursor over any one of the “handles” that mark
where a vertex is on the polygon you drew. If you hold the mouse button
down, you can move this vertex.

p. If you click once on an arc (line) that comprises a side of the polygon, you
will add a new vertex.

q. If you hold the cursor over a vertex and hit the delete key, you will delete a
vertex.

r. In this manner you can make your building footprint match the image as
accurately as possible.

s. When you are finished, go to Theme, Stop Editing, save your edits, and then
you will be out of edit mode. You will notice that the last polygon you
edited, will now be a selected record.

t. Open the new Theme’s Table, and you will see an empty table. Practice
editing the table so that each building has a unique ID number.

u. From here, if you had real data such as the building name, address,
materials stored, type of business, whether it was for sale, etc., you could
link or join as we learned in Chapter Two.

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 v. The process is the same for generating themes of points or lines. Feel free
to experiment!

Arcview Scripts

Introduction

Arcview is written using a programming language called Avenue. Everything you do in

Arcview, whether it is opening a project, adding a theme, opening a table, or creating a
layout, is done through this programming language.

The individual processes, e.g. adding a theme, is contained in a single program file called
an Avenue Script; this script is a collection of commands that are executed every time
you click an icon or use something in the tool bar. You don’t see them, but they are
running.

Needless to say, the basic Arcview program software contains hundreds of scripts. There
are also many scripts (thousands???) that people have written in Avenue to accomplish
their own tasks when the basic program doesn’t contain what they need. There is
probably no task that cannot be accomplished in Arcview if you know how to write
Avenue scripts.

Fortunately, because of this extensive library of existing scripts, chances are someone has
already written a script for that one elusive task you need to carry out. Thus, it is unlikely
that you will need to learn Avenue (unless you really want to!).

A. Using Scripts

1. First, let’s see how to use some of the scripts that are available as part of the
Basic Arcview software package, but which are not readily apparent.

2. Start with an entirely new View and add the theme of buildings that you just
created from the image.

3. Open it’s table. Notice that there is no indication of the area, acreage or
perimeter. This is because your theme is a shapefile and, if you recall,
shapefiles do not have topology inherent in them. If this had been an Arc/Info
coverage, those attributes would be there. Fortunately there is an Arcview
Script that will build these attributes for us.

4. Close the Table.

5. Make your Project Window the Active Window. Click on the Script Icon and
the New Button to open a blank Script document.

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 6. Go to the Menu Bar, and choose Script, then Load Text File.

7. Navigate to the /application/arcview32/arcview3/samples/scripts directory in

the right hand pane. In the left hand pane, scroll down and choose the file
calcacre.ave. Click OK.

7. In the script window, an Avenue script will appear. These are all the commands
that will be executed when the script runs (see now why you may not want to
learn Avenue Programming?).

8. Click on the Compile Icon in the button bar to compile the script.

9. Click on the Run Script Icon to execute the script

10. Now return to your View window, make it active and open the table of the
buildings theme once again. Lo and behold you should see that the area, acreage
and perimeter of each record (polygon) has been calculated!!

Remember! If you edit a shapefile and change it’s configuration, you will need to run
this script to recalculate these values if you intend on using them.

B. Creating Icons for Scripts

1. Say you are going to be recalculating areas repetitively and you really don’t
want to have to keep going back and forth from View to Script to View. You
can add an icon to the View tool bar so you only have to click on the icon to
create or update area, acreage and perimeter.

2. Once again, make your Project Window the Active Window. Go to your Menu
Bar and choose Project, Customize.

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3. In the new window, choose View for Type; for category choose Tools.

4. You will see all your existing tool icons, plus a couple that you normally don’t
see in the bottom part of this window.

5. Click on the Tool Button and a new blank tool will be added adjacent to your
identify tool.

6. Move your cursor onto the line that says Click, and click twice

7. When the Script Manager window opens, scroll through the list until you find
Script1 which is where you loaded the calcacre.ave script (alphabetical).

8. Also click twice adjacent to the word Icon, and select a symbol to sit on top of
your icon.

9. Now just dismiss the window. When you make your View window the Active
Window you will see the new tool you just created next to the identify button.

10. Now edit your buildings theme as usual. When you are done, stop editing, save
your edits, and then run the script by clicking on the icon you just made.

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This is just one example of a script. More pre-written scripts can be found in the
Arcview help files under Help, Contents, Sample Scripts and Extensions. There are
scripts to help you do additional things in Views, Tables, Charts, etc. Hundreds of other
scripts can be found on the ESRI web site, as well as other GIS web sites.

A Note On Accuracy

Now that you know some ways to create data, it is important to think about how
accurate your data are. This will depend on many factors:

• How accurate your original data are, i.e. the image or topographic map you
digitized from. Your data can never be “more” accurate than the source material.
You are not improving it by entering it into the computer. You are only
replicating it to the best of your ability.

• How well you digitize; in most situations you can never enter the coordinates of
a line exactly the same way twice. There will always be a margin of error
between the way you digitize today and the way you digitize the same line or
point tomorrow. Plus, you would never enter the coordinates of the line the same
way as someone else even though you may be digitizing from the same source
material. There is personal judgement inherent in the process.

• If you are not digitizing but entering coordinates from a spreadsheet, how
accurate are those coordinates? How many decimal places did you use? What is
the vendor-specified accuracy of the GPS unit you are using? Did you post-
process the GPS data appropriately?

It is beyond the scope of this workshop to present you with the methods for
determining the numeric accuracy of data you create. I bring it up here so that you
are aware that, if you share your data, or ever use the data to defend a legal position
(i.e. the location of a wetland boundary) you will probably be asked how accurate the
data are; how close are you to the true, on-the-land, in-the-field geographic location.

Once again, metadata can play an important role. Write down how you generated
the data from start to finish! Like backing up your hard drive, this is often
overlooked and can come back to haunt you if you don’t do it!

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 Chapter Four
Creating Layouts

1. Layouts are the document type in an Arcview Project where you place your Views,
Tables and Charts on a “piece of paper” that will be printed.

2. This is also where you add Titles, Legends, North Arrows, and Scale Bars to generate
a final cartographic product.

3. Layouts are dynamic. If you go back and change something in a View, it will
automatically be updated in your layout (unless you tell it not to).

4. Layouts can be exported into a variety of formats if they need to be incorporated into
other documents or sent to a publisher in electronic format. The most common
format is encapsulated postscript.

5. Open an entirely new Arcview Project. In your View, add the themes Towns and
Basins.

6. Zoom out to the full extent of all themes (all watershed basins should be showing).

7. In your Project Window, highlight the Layout icon and then click on the New button.

8. A new window with a blank “piece of paper” appears called Layout 1.

9. Your Menu Bar, Button Bar, and Tool Bar now have icons that are specific to
Layouts.

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By now, some of these will be familiar and perform the same functions; others will be
entirely new.

10. First let’s look into the Layout Properties icon in the Button Bar.

a. When you click on this icon, you will get a new window with the name of the
current Layout. Here you can change the name to be something more
descriptive than “Layout 1”. If you have a Project that will contain many
Layouts, the more descriptive your title the better, since you will want to be able
to recall what it is just by looking at the title in your Project Window.

b. You can also designate the Grid Spacing. By default, Arcview places a grid on
your sheet of paper that is .025 by .025 inches. Any elements you place on this
piece of paper will snap to the corners of this grid. In most cases, I have found
that this is not precise enough; it doesn’t give you enough control over where to
place things. So I typically change the grid spacing to .005 by .005. You will
develop your own feel for what is appropriate for you. You may even prefer to
not have your elements snap to a grid at all, although that tends to make it harder
to align elements like your title and legend.

c. Now in your Menu Bar, choose Layout, then Page Setup. This is where you can
change the orientation of your layout from portrait to landscape, and also change
the margins. For now, choose portrait (the default) and change your margins to
.5 inches (you have to uncheck the box that says “Use Printer Border”).

d. Depending on the printers / plotters that are available, you would be able to
increase the size of the map to something other than 8.5 x 11. With the large
format Techjet plotter in this room, you could make a Layout that is up to 36”
wide and unlimited length. For now however, just stick with 8.5 x 11.

There are a number of factors that will determine whether you choose landscape or
portrait:
1. The configuration of the View; e.g. a map of the City of
Providence will fit better on landscape, while one of Narragansett
(long and skinny) will fit better on portrait.

2. Other documents you may wish to add (charts, tables, images)

3. Other graphic elements you wish to add (titles, legends, scale

bars).

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 There is no necessarily “correct” way to present your data. General guidelines
are:
• keep your layout as simple as possible while still conveying your
message,
• keep the elements on the paper “balanced”,
• don’t overwhelm the eyes with more than six to eight colors.

11. If you cannot see the entire “piece of paper” in the Layout Window, use
the Zoom to Page icon.

12. The little “globe” icon in the Tool Bar is the most important icon for
Layouts.

a. Click once on this icon, then move your cursor (now a crosshair) into the lower
left hand corner of your “piece of paper”.

b. Click and HOLD YOUR MOUSE BUTTON down while dragging a box across
the page. You are creating a FRAME for your View.

c. When you release the mouse button, a new window will pop up asking you
several things:

1. Which View you wish to place on the paper. If you had more than one
View, it would list all of them. You can place multiple Views on your
Layout (one at a time). For now, highlight View 1.

2. The Live Link box is checked by Default. This means that if you go
back and change your View in the View window, the Layout will
automatically be updated to reflect that change.

3. Here is where you can also determine the scale at which you wish
Arcview to draw the View.

• “Automatic” – Given the size of the frame you drew and the extent
of the View, Arcview will fit the View within the frame
automatically.

• “Preserve the scale” – if you set a scale in your View and you
want that exact scale preserved on the layout, select this.

• “User specified scale” – here you can tell Arcview that, regardless
of the scale that is in the View, you want to force a specific scale
on the layout.

For now, retain the default, which is Automatic.

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 4. Leave the other choices on their defaults for now and click OK.

d. Arcview will draw an exact replica of your View onto the page. There will be
“handles” on the frame, which mean that you can re-position it on the paper, as
well as re-size it.

e. If you are unhappy with the way it looks and it cannot be fixed by re-sizing or
moving it, you can delete it by hitting the delete key or, in the Menu Bar,
choosing Edit, then Delete.

f. Try out your familiar zoom in, zoom out, and pan tools. They essentially do the
same things as in Views, however, there are some slight differences. For
example, the pan tool doesn’t move the View, it moves the entire “piece of
paper”.

g. Now click once again on the globe icon, but hold the mouse button down so you
can see other choices on this drop down menu.

Select the legend frame tool

Drag a box on the paper where you would like your

legend to be. Arcview will ask you which View you
would like your legend to come from. In this case,
you have only created one View, so you will only
have one to highlight. Click OK and Arcview will copy the legend from
your View onto the Layout.

Like Views on your Layout, Legends are also dynamic but you have to
close then re-open your Layout for changes to take effect.

To demonstrate this, return to your View Window.

In the View Window, change the name of the theme “Towns” to be “Rhode
Island Towns” in the legend (Remember how? Hint – Theme, Properties).

Now return to your Layout and you will see that the word Towns still
appears in the legend. Now close your Layout, then re-open it, and the
change will be there. Alternatively, you can delete the legend and replace it
for the change to take effect.

h. Return to your globe icon, and this time select the Scale Bar frame tool

1. Drag a box on your View.

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 2. In this case, we are going to have a problem. Arcview will put an empty
box on your layout. This is because we haven’t told Arcview what our
View Properties are, so it doesn’t know how to calculate the scale.

3. To fix this, make your View Window active once more, and choose View
from the Menu Bar, then Properties. Remember setting your Map Units and
Distance Units? These are currently unknown to Arcview. You must set
them before Arcview can determine scale.

Important Note – Recall above when you had the option of Preserve View
Scale or User Specified Scale as you placed your View on the Layout? In
order for Arcview to calculate the correct scale, you must set the Map Units
and Distance Units BEFORE placing the View on the Layout!!!

4. Choose meters for map units and miles for distance units. Hit OK.

5. Make the Layout your Active Window. Delete the old scale bar graphic (if
it is there) by selecting it with the pointer tool and hitting the delete key.

6. Re-enter a scale bar frame by dragging a box on your Layout, and this time
Arcview will build a scale bar for you. Once again, you can re-size it or
move it using the pointer tool.

7. Notice that you have several choices for the style of the scale bar, and you
also have the ability to force the number of intervals if you wish.

h. Add a North arrow by choosing the North arrow frame tool from your tool bar.

1. Drag a box on the layout where you want your

North arrow to appear, and a new window with several choices will
appear. Select whatever appeals to you and click ok.

i. If you had developed a chart, you could place that on your Layout with the Chart
frame tool;

j. With the Table Framing tool, you could add a Table; and

k. With the Picture Frame tool, you could add a recognized graphic such as a .bmp file
or a .jpg file.

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 Chart tool
Table Tool

Picture Frame Tool

l. With the choices in the Graphic Tool pull down menu you can add free hand shapes
to your Layout. Experiment!

Points

Lines

Rectangles
Circles
Polygons

m. Add Titles or other text to your Layout using the Text Tool. There is a pull down
menu here too, giving you some choices as to how you wish your text to appear.

Don’t care for the font? Go to your Menu Bar, choose Window, then Show Symbol
Window. The Palette will appear from which you can change the font, color, and
symbology of any element on your layout.

70
n. You can use the Pointer Tool to select any of the frames or graphic elements you
have placed on your layout. Once selected they can be moved, re-sized, or
deleted.

o. Multiple items can be selected at the same time by holding down the shift key and
pointing at each item one at a time. Using the Menu Bar, Edit, Copy, you can copy
these selected items to the clipboard to be placed into another layout (note however
that Arcview’s clipboard does NOT interact with other windows based programs).

p. If you click on the Neatline Tool you will get a new window that will allow you to
add some nice borders to your layouts, including borders with shadow boxes.

q. Now, return to your View, and edit the Basins theme so that it shades each major
watershed basin a separate color (Hint: Legend Editor, Unique Value).

r. Return to your Layout and see how it has changed. Not only the View, but the
Legend has been updated as well.

11. Inset Maps (Locus Maps)

a. These are very useful if you think the audience looking at your map will need
some additional context to locate themselves relative to your study area.

b. Open a new View in your current project.

c. Add the States.shp theme from the /class2/av101/usa directory.

d. Rename this View to be called United States (Hint – Menu Bar, View,
Properties, Name)

e. Zoom In so that you just see the New England area

f. Using your Graphic Tool, draw a circle around Rhode Island.

g. Return to your Layout Window.

h. Using your View Frame tool (the little globe) draw a frame on the
“piece of paper”

i. When the View Frame Properties Window pops up, highlight United States as
the View you wish to place in this View Frame.

j. Leave all the other settings at their default values and hit OK

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 k. Arcview will put an exact replica of your United States View onto your layout.

l. You can draw a box around it using your Neatline Tool, and explain
that it is a Locus Map with your Text Tool.

12. Printing your Map

1. From the File Menu, choose Print

2. When the new window pops up, you’ll see an entry beginning with lp.
Leave the lp, and afterwards type –d quake. The entire line should read”

lp -d quake

3. Click OK button, and Arcview will print your layout to the printer named
quake. If the map you design is larger than 8.5 x 11, you’ll want to
substitute quake with the name of the large format plotter, ice

4. Depending on the complexity of your layout, printing may take some time. Layouts that
have images (such as the orthophotograph) can take a VERY long time. (Something to
consider when you are trying to get that final map done for the report that is due in ten
minutes!).

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 Chapter Five
The Spatial Analyst Extension

Most of the GIS data you have worked with up until this point - towns, villages, streams,
etc. - are Vector Data. This means that the spatial information is recorded as a series of
xy coordinates. Point features are recorded as a single xy coordinate, while lines and the
edges of polygons are recorded as sequences of xy coordinates. This method of
representing geographic features works well for distinct entities such as roads, streams,
and cities. Depending on how many xy coordinates are entered, the representation of the
feature can either be mildly or highly accurate.

Arcview now has an Extension called Spatial Analyst (SA) that allows you to work with
Raster Data. Raster data differs from Vector Data in that the spatial information is
recorded in a grid of pixels arranged in rows and columns. Each pixel contains a number
which represents a geographic feature such as the soil type, or the elevation, for that
particular location. The raster data format is excellent for representing geographic
features that vary continuously over a surface, such as elevation, reflectance, soil types,
or depth to groundwater, although they can be used to represent discrete features as well.

Images, like the digital orthophotograph of the Providence area you just used to create a
new theme, are in the raster data format. The image formats that SA supports are: .bmp,
.bsq, .bil, .bip, .lan, .gis, .img, .jpg, .sid, .rs, .ras, .sun, and .tiff.

ESRI (the company that makes Arcview) also has it’s own raster data format, called
GRID.

While you can “look” at most images in Arcview without the SA extension, and they are
in the raster data format as opposed to vector data, you cannot manipulate them or use
them for analyses until they have been turned into ESRIs Grid format. Using SA, images
can easily be converted to Grids for analyses. We’ll see later on how to convert an image
to a grid. First some basics:

To load the Spatial Analyst Extension

1. Open a brand new Arcview project

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2. Go to File in the Menu Bar, then Extensions.
3. A window pops up with all possible Arcview Extensions. Scroll down until you
see Spatial Analyst and click in the box to turn it on. Click OK.

3. In Arcview, grids are treated as another type of theme. So now, in addition to

point themes, line themes, polygon themes, and images, we will now have grid
themes.

4. Open a New View.

5. Grid themes are added to your View in the same manner as your other theme
types using the Add Theme Icon.

6. Navigate all the way to the /application/arcview32/arcview3/avtutor/spatial

directory in the right hand window.

7. Because you have added the SA extension, you now have a choice to change your
Data Source Type to be Grid Data Source (before we only had Features or
Images as choices).

8. Once you have changed to the Grid Data Source, you should see several grid
themes in the left hand window: dem, elevgrd, hillshd, and popden.

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 9. Add the grid theme elevgrd to your View and turn it on. This is a grid theme of
elevation data where each pixel contains a value of elevation.

10. Using your Zoom In Tool, zoom in to a small box anywhere on the grid. You’ll
see the “stair step” effect caused by the raster data format of small pixels (cells).

11. You can use the Identify Tool to point at any one of the pixels, and the now
familiar window will pop up showing you the value of that particular cell.

12. Notice also that, in the left hand side of the window, there is an xy coordinate
value. So even though this grid is in raster data format, it is still georeferenced:
the location of that pixel is representing a point on the surface of the earth,
although within that pixel there may be small variations in elevation.

13. Dismiss the Identify Result window.

B. Changing the Colors of Your Grid

1. Specialized Color Ramps are available in Arcview to represent commonly

encountered grid themes.

2. Make the grid your Active Theme if it is not already, and open its legend using
the Legend Editor.

3. In the Color Ramp box, Scroll down and choose Elevation#2.

4. Hit the Apply button, and your grid will now be displayed in a color series that
is commonly used for Elevations.

5. Note that there are other ramps for grids representing precipitation data, the sea
floor, temperature, etc.

6. If you don’t care for these pre-determined colors, you are still free to change
each color individually by clicking twice on any individual box and choosing
from your color palette.

C. Changing the Classification of Your Grid

1. When Arcview loads a grid, it defaults to a certain classification and assigns the
values of each pixel to that classification range. Hence, in this case, Arcview
automatically assigns the pixels into nine elevation ranges, starting with
elevations in the range of 94.738 to 425.355.

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 2. You may not wish to accept this representation depending on what you are
trying to illustrate, and you can change it.
3. Click on the Classify Button

4. A new window will pop up entitled Classification.

5. Change the number of classes to 5, and the Round Values at: to a single value
“d” (e.g. no decimal) and Click OK.

6. You now have a more generalized illustration of elevation values. In the same
manner, you could choose to have a larger number of classes so that your grid
was displayed with greater detail. Feel free to experiment with your different
choices!

7. After you’ve experimented a bit, dismiss this window.

D. Grid Theme Properties

1. You can get some information about your grid using the Theme Properties
Icon.

2. Once you click on this icon, a new window comes up showing you the cell
(pixel) size (these data are in meters), number of rows and columns for the grid,
the geographic extent of the grid, and the type of grid it is (floating point vs.
integer).

SA stores grids as either floating point data or integer data. If the variable you are
mapping is an integer, an integer grid is created that has an associated attribute table
(similar to attribute tables that exist with the vector data you’ve been working with).
This table contains the value of the cell, and can contain other numeric or character
attributes associated with those cell values. If the variable you are mapping contains
a decimal point, it will be stored as a floating point grid. Floating point grids do not
have attribute tables. Floating point grids represent features that have continuous
values such as elevation. Integer grids are usually used to represent features with
discrete values to represent phenomena in categories, such as counties. An integer
grid can represent continuous data as well, but measurements are only accurate to a
whole number.

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 3. As with other themes you can change the name of the grid to something that is
meaningful – In the box Theme Name, type Elevation Values. You could also
add a comment in the comment box. This is useful if you are going to develop
new grids from this grid (which we will be doing in a minute). In the comment
box you might want to write in that this is your source grid. This way you can
easily keep track of what your grid represents.

4. Click OK and you will see the name of the grid change in the legend.

E. Two New Icons In Your Button Bar and Tool Bar

1. By now you will be familiar with most of the icons in your Button Bar and Tool
Bar. However, SA gives you two new ones that are unique to grids.

2. With the Elvgrd as your Active Theme, if you click on the Histogram Icon in
the Button Bar, Arcview will produce a histogram illustrating the number of
pixels within each elevation range. Note that, if you change your legend using
the classification technique used above, the histogram will reflect those changes.

3. There is now also a Contour Icon in your Tool Bar. Click on this icon, then
move your cursor into the View anywhere over the grid, and click once.
Arcview will draw a contour by “connecting” cells of equal value.

4. Zoom In closely to an area where the color changes from one elevation range to
another. Using the Contour Icon, point at a pixel along the edge of the two
colors. Having zoomed in this closely you will be able to see how Arcview
estimates a line between pixels of different values.

5. Please be sure to note that these Contour Lines are NOT currently a new theme.
They do not show up in your legend. They are simply a graphic element to give
you a quick idea of where pixels change values.

6. You can turn these contours into a theme by doing the following:

a. Go to Edit, Select All Graphics so that all the contours are selected.

b. Go back to Edit, then choose Copy Graphics. These are now on

Arcview’s clipboard

c. Next, go to View, New Theme.

d. In the pop up window, choose Line.

e. In the right window, navigate to your own directory if you are not there
already and give your theme a new name that you will remember.

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 f. Arcview will now place an empty theme in your View with that name,
and you will be in Edit Mode (recall the dashed lines around the check
box).

g. Next, go back to Edit, and select Paste. This will place the contents of
the clipboard into the new theme.

h. Now go to Theme, Stop Editing and Save your Edits.

i. You will now have a brand new theme with the contour lines.

j. This method has a disadvantage – the data doesn’t go with the lines.
So if you now open the contour line’s Table, you won’t have attributes
with the lines. Depending on your particular project, this might be
problematic – but not to worry! There is another way!

F. What’s Available Under the Surface?

1. More Contours

a. Zoom back out to the full extent of your grid theme if you are not there already.

b. In your Menu Bar, you also have a new choice that was not there before adding
the SA Extension. It is the Surface choice. With our current grid containing
elevation data we can have Arcview do a lot of things for us. Click on the Surface
choice and see what is there.

c. First note the Create Contours selection. This selection differs significantly
from the Contour Icon you just used in your Button Bar, in that it creates a new
line theme from the data in your grid.

d. Go ahead and select Create Contours. You will then be asked to tell Arcview
how you want these contours developed. For now, accept the defaults of 100 and
0. Click OK, and Arcview will automatically place a new theme in your legend
called Contours of Elevation Values. Go ahead and turn it on! (You may need to
change the color of the lines using the legend editor if you cannot see them).

e. Once again, zoom in closely to an area to see how the contours are represented
against the stair step effect of the grid.

f. Using your Identify Tool, click on any single line. Arcview will report the
elevation of that contour.

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 g. Thus, using this particular method of creating contours, the data reflecting the
information in the grid is retained in the new theme! To verify this even further,
you can open the Table for the new theme and you will see the data for every line.
2. Creating a Slope Grid Theme

a. Zoom all the way out, and making sure the Elevation grid is your Active Theme,
return to the Menu Bar and the Surface selection. Choose Derive Slope.
Arcview will crank a little bit, then add a new theme to your legend called Slope
of Elevation Values. Turn it on! You now have a slope map!

b. Derive Slope identifies the slope, or maximum rate of change, from each cell to
its neighbors. The output slope grid theme represents the degree of slope (e.g., 10
degree slope) for each cell location.

c. It is possible to use this feature with data other than elevation data; e.g. you might
wish to create a map illustrating the maximum rate of change in reflectance.

3. Creating an Aspect Grid Theme

a. Once again, making sure the Elevation grid is your Active Theme, and you are
Zoomed Out, next choose the Derive Aspect selection under Surface.

b. Derive Aspect identifies the steepest down-slope direction from each cell to its
neighbors. The values of the output grid theme represent the compass direction of
the aspect; 0 is true north, a 90 degree aspect is to the east, and so forth. A legend
representing the 8 cardinal directions is assigned to the output grid theme (e.g.,
east [67.5 - 112.5 degrees], southeast [112.5 - 157.5]).

4. Creating a Hillshade Grid Theme

a. And last but not least, choose Compute Hillshade from the Surface menu with
the Elevation Grid as your Active Theme. When you do this, Arcview will open a
new window for you to enter some information:

b. Initially, just accept the defaults, and click OK. Arcview will create a new grid
theme called Hillshade of Elevation Values. Turn it on!

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 c. Compute Hillshade is used to determine the hypothetical illumination of a surface
as part of an analysis step or for graphical display.

d. Go ahead and make another hillshade, only this time, change the values for the
azimuth and the altitude. The azimuth is where the illumination source is in
relation to the input grid theme. The altitude is the slope or angle of the
illumination source above the horizon. See how the View changes as you alter
the input data.

e. For a graphical display, Compute Hillshade can greatly enhance the relief of a
surface when the output is used as the brightness theme for the display of another
grid theme. This can be done with the Advanced button in the Legend Editor.

f. Let’s do this now…..turn off all your themes except the original elevation grid,
which you should leave on and make the Active Theme. Open it’s legend using
the Legend Editor.

g. In the lower left hand corner of the window, you should see a button labeled
Advanced. Click on this button. In the first box, Brightness Theme, choose
Hillshade. Accept the defaults for minimum and maximum brightness, then click
OK.

h. You should now have a shaded relief map!

G. Interpolation Methods in Spatial Analyst

a. We can also use Arcview to create grids from vector data we may have collected.

b. For example, say you have gone out and taken measurements of the potassium
content of soil at various locations in an area. You know the exact locations
where you have taken the measurements from your GPS unit, and have entered
them into the GIS as a point theme.

c. Open a brand new View, and add the point theme soilsamp.shp, and the polygon
theme thefarm.shp from the /application/arcview32/arcview3/avtutor/spatial
directory (remember - you may have to change your Data Source Type back
to Feature Data Source if you can’t see the shapefiles)!

d. Turn on both themes, and make soilsamp.shp your Active Theme. Then do an
Identify on one of the points.

e. There are several attributes associated with each point. We are going to use the
attribute of soil_k, a measure of potassium content.

f. From the Surface menu, choose Interpolate Grid.

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g. In the new window called Output Grid Specification, choose “Same as
thefarm.shp” for your output grid extent. This tells Arcview that you want the
extent of the new grid theme that is going to be created to be equivalent to the
extent of the study area, which in this case is the boundary of the farm field.

h. Change only the number of rows to 100 and hit Enter.

i. On the Interpolation dialog box, set Method to Spline.

j. Change the Z-value field to the attribute of interest, in this case Soil_k, and click
OK.

k. Arcview will crank and then put a new grid theme in your View.

l. The resulting grid theme is the best estimate of what the quantity is on the actual
surface for each location. It has interpolated the amount of potassium at all
locations on the surface of the field based on the values at the known locations.

m. You may have noted that in addition to Spline, there was a choice for IDW.
These two surface interpolators make certain assumptions about how to determine
the best estimated values between points. Based on the phenomena the values
represent and on how the sample points are distributed, different interpolators will
produce better estimates relative to the actual values. No matter which
interpolator is selected, the more input points and the greater their distribution, the
more reliable the results.

n. The Spline interpolator is a general purpose interpolation method that fits a

minimum-curvature surface through the input points. ESRI describes this as
“Conceptually, it is like bending a sheet of rubber to pass through the points,
while minimizing the total curvature of the surface. It fits a mathematical function
to a specified number of nearest input points, while passing through the sample
points. This method is best for gently varying surfaces such as elevation, water
table heights, or pollution concentrations. It is not appropriate if there are large
changes in the surface within a short horizontal distance, because it can overshoot
estimated values. The Regularized method yields a smooth surface. The Tension
method tunes the stiffness of the surface according to the character of the modeled
phenomenon.”

o. “The Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolator assumes that each input
point has a local influence that diminishes with distance. It weights the points
closer to the processing cell greater than those farther away. A specified number
of points, or optionally all points within a specified radius, can be used to
determine the output value for each location. Use it, for example, to interpolate a
surface of consumer purchasing. More distant locations have less influence,
because people are more likely to shop closer to home.”

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G. Converting Images to Grids

1. For fun, let’s get out of Rhode Island for awhile and work on the moon. Really!

2. First, create a New View, and then add the Image Theme Clem9.tif and turn it
on.

3. Notice how there are very few icons available for use – for example, the Identify
Tool is grayed out. This is because, while Arcview recognizes the image
format, the data behind the image (in this case the gray scale color) is not yet
available.

Reminder!! Using this image, you could now create new themes based on the features
you see in this image; e.g. you could generate a theme called Craters and then edit that
theme’s table to incorporate, or join to, other data you might have (the names of the
craters, specific characteristics, etc.). Then using your legend editor, you could create a
map showing all the craters based on these characteristics.

4. Moving back to grids….with the tif image as the Active Theme, go to your
menu bar and select Properties, then Convert to Grid.

5. When the new window comes up, make sure to navigate to your own directory
folder if you are not already there, and then assign a name to the new grid you
will be creating and Click OK.

6. You will see that Arcview is working on the conversion by the blue bar at the
bottom of the Arcview window indicating its progress. When it is finished it
will ask you if you wish to add the grid to the View. Go ahead and say yes.

7. Turn on the new Grid Theme; Arcview will have defaulted to the Red
Monochromatic Color Ramp. Change it back to Gray Monochromatic using
your Legend Editor.

8. If the Gray Scale is reversed, i.e. the low numbers are white and the high
numbers are black, you can reverse this – use the Switch Icon within the Legend
Editor

9. The Grid should now resemble the original tif image.

10. Now your Identify Tool will be available for use and you can click on any given
pixel and get a result back.

11. The Value in this case is a number Arcview assigned to the pixel based on what
it saw in the original tif. It only represents color, but depending on your project

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 this color may be meaningful. For example, the brighter values may indicate a
higher reflectance which in turn indicate a certain type of substrate.

12. The Count is the number of pixels in the grid with that particular value.

13. You can also use this grid theme to create new vector themes; e.g. you could use
the contour tool as you did above to have Arcview generate the polygons around
the grid cells of common values.

H. What’s Under Analysis

1. The Map Query Tool

a. If you now go back to your Menu Bar and select the Analysis pull down
menu, you will see a choice “Map Query”.

b. This provides a similar function to the Query Tool that we used for Vector
Data, in that it allows us to make selections on the Grid.

c. When you click on Map Query, you will get a new window entitled Map
Query 1.

d. Once again, we will be building a query statement, so in the Layers box,

click twice on the grid name (not the gridname.count).

e. Click once on the equals sign

f. Click twice on 255 in the Unique Values box

g. Then Click on the Evaluate Button.

h. Arcview will now run through the entire Grid, assign a new value of 0 or
1 to each pixel depending on whether it meets the criteria of the query
statement. A value of 0 means that the current value of the pixel does not =
255; a value of 1 means that the current value does = 255.

i. A new grid will be placed in your View automatically reflecting the

outcome of this query statement. Go ahead and turn it on!

2. The Map Calculator

a. Make the Grid your Active Theme again, and then go back to Analysis, then
Map Calculator.

b. This window allows you to perform arithmetic calculations on the values of

your grid to create new grids.

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 c. You can also create a new grid by performing calculations on the values of
cells in two or more grids. For example, you might wish to combine the
values of the cells of one grid with the values of the cells in another grid.
The map calculator will allow you to do this.

d. I encourage you to go to the Help menu and, in the index, get the help for
Map Calculator if you wish to read more about what this function can do.
There is a lot more detail than I can talk about here.

This is just a brief introduction to Spatial Analyst. Feel free to experiment!

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