Documents and layers

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 1
 ArcMap

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 2
Map document (.mxd)

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 3
Map document (.mxd)
Stores:
 What data to show
 Where to find the data
 How to show the data

It does not store the actual map data
 Why not?

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 4
Map document
 Store data once
 Different map documents can show the same data 
in different ways
• Black roads vs. red roads
• Different people can access same data, show it the way 
they want
 Update data once, reflected on all maps.

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 5
Keeping track of files

ArcMap

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 6
 Setting the default geodatabase

 Good idea to create new file 
geodatabase for each new 
project (e.g., assignment) 
 Make a habit of setting this for 
every new map document
 Make sure to set it to a drive 
that you can access later. 

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 7
 Relative pathnames
and moving data/projects
 Make sure this is checked 

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 8
Jack Dangermond

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 9
Jack Dangermond
 Education in urban planning, 
landscape architecture at Harvard
 President and founder of 
Environmental Systems Research 
Institute Inc. (ESRI)
Eric Laycock, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

 Commercialized GIS

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 10
Map scale

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 11
Distance on a map

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 12
 Map scale is needed to 
calculate distance

Map scale

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 13
 Always 1

Map distance 1
1:250,000
Ground distance 250,000

Map scale

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 14
 10 cm on map
Scale 1:5,000
1 10 cm
=
5,000 x
x = 10 cm x 5,000
Actual distance = 50,000 cm
= 500 m

Calculating distances using map scale

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 15
 1:500,000
Representative fraction
(absolute scale) 

“one inch to one mile”
Verbal scale

0 50 100 200 300 400 Km

Bar scale

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 16
 Is this a large scale 
or small scale map?

Small scale!
Is this a large scale or small scale map?

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 17
 Large scale Small scale

1 1 1
5,000 2,000,000 300,000,000
Larger number Smaller number Really small number
0.0002 0.0000005 0.000000003333

Continuum of map scales (adapted from Lo and Yeung, 2006)

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 18
Scale on a web map

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 19
Scale on a web map

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 20
Larger scale Smaller scale

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 21
 512 pixels

256 pixels
Tile Tile

256 pixels

512 pixels
Tile

Tile Tile
Zoom level 0
Zoom level 1

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 22
 Esri’s cloud servers Your device

Region, zoom level

Necessary tile data

All map tiles at all zoom levels Only the tiles you need
(huge amount of data) (very small amount of data)

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 23
How can we calculate web map scale?

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 24
 9.3 cm on map, 69.0 m on ground
Map scale 1:?
Map distance 1 0.093 m
=
Ground distance x 69.0 m
x = 741.9

Map scale = 1:742

Calculating map scale

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 25
Scale and annotation

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 26
Basemap choice and annotation

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 27
AGOL: Scale visibility range

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 28
ArcMap: Scale range for display

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 29
© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 30
0.5 mm wide line on a paper map…

Scale Ground Ground

1:50,000 25,000 mm 25 m
1:250,000 125,000 mm 125 m
1:10,000,000 5,000,000 mm 5,000 m

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 31
Scale affects how entities are represented

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 32
Scale, annotation, and visibility

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 33
Esri basemap: Topographic

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 34
Esri basemap: Terrain with Labels

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 35
Esri basemap: National Geographic

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 36
Esri basemap: OpenStreetMap

© Donald Boyes, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto 37