ArcView Overview

The ArcView GUI

ArcView's graphical user interface (GUI) is located along the top of the active window. The GUI consists of a top row of pulldown menus (the menu bar), a row of buttons (the button bar), and a row of tools (the toolbar). Clicking menu options, buttons, and tools allows you to perform actions on your data quickly and easily. Each document type has its own set of menus, buttons, and tools. When you switch between document windows, you will notice that the GUI changes. Below you see two of the ArcView GUIs--the view document GUI at top and the table document GUI beneath it. Notice that the view GUI has a View menu and six other pulldown menus, while the table GUI has a Table menu and five other menus. Also, notice that the table GUI has fewer buttons and only three tools on its toolbar.

ArcView GIS Tool Buttons

Save - Saves the current project Add a theme - Adds a theme to the current view Theme properties - Opens theme properties editor Legend editor - Allows user to alter the appearance of the legend Open theme table - Opens the attribute table associated with the active theme Find features - Uses a term to search the table

Locate address - Locates and opens the web page associated with the theme Query Builder - Searches the table associated with the active theme - Zoom full extent - Zooms to the full extent of the view - Zoom to selected theme - Zooms to the extent of the selected theme - Zoom to selected feature - Zooms to the extent of the selected features - Zoom in - Zooms in to the center of the view - Zoom out - Zooms out to the center of the view - Zoom previous - Zooms to the previous view - Select by graphic - Selects features in the active theme that are under, or within a distance of, a graphic this is drawn on the view - Clear selected features - Deselects any features that are selected in an active theme - Help - Provides information about a button or feature that it is clicked on - info - Displays the attribute features from an active theme for an area that is clicked on - Pointer - Used to select, move and resize features - Vertex editing - Used to edit the location of vertex in a theme (DISABLED IN DP) - Select by feature - Drag the mouse to create a box in which all features in the active theme are selected - Zoom in - Zooms in centered on cursor, can also be used to drag a box to zoom in to - Zoom out - Zooms out centered on cursor, can also be used to drag a box to zoom out to - Drag and drop view - Grabs the view and shifts it around - Scale measure - Measures the distance between two points, will be in the units specified under View:Properties:Map Units - Hot link - Opens a page on the web linked to a feature in the active theme - Area of Interest - Selects features in a map library (DISABLED IN DP) - Tag - Adds a label to a feature that is clicked on - Text - Adds text to a view, will add the text to the active theme - Draw and Edit tools - Adds points, lines and polygon features

- Delete Report Theme - Removes a theme from a map report - Add Report Theme - Adds a theme to the map report

The Project Window

Below is a Project window like the one you saw before. In ArcView, all projects have the .apr file extension. Clicking the document icons on the left side of the Project window shows you the documents contained in the project. This project contains one view, five tables, and one chart. A document isn't necessarily displayed just because it belongs to a project. You can display whichever documents you like by double-clicking their names, then size them to suit your purposes.

Project Documents
ArcView organizes your data in a project file identified by an .apr extension. Projects store and organize information in four kinds of documents: Views, Tables, Charts, and Layouts. Each document type displays data differently, and each has its own menus, buttons, and tools arranged in a unique interface. (For more information, see Using ArcView Tools)

Views
Views display geographic data organized by theme. A theme is a set of related features, such as nations, districts, cities, streets, parcels, utilities, or bus routes, along with the attributes for those features. A view consists of a map display area on the right and a Table of Contents, or legend, on the left that tells you what themes are contained in the view and which ones are currently displayed. The view name is displayed in its window's title bar. Each theme in the Table of Contents has a check box next to its name. If the box is checked, the theme displays. If the box is not checked, that means the theme is not being displayed. You control whether a theme displays--simply check or uncheck the box. The view below contains two themes. One is a theme of major cities in the United States. Because its box isn't checked in the Table of Contents, it doesn't display.

Tables

A table displays records as rows and fields as columns. In tables that are linked to a theme, called theme attribute tables, each record represents a single feature and each field represents a single attribute for that feature. You can edit tables to add new records and fields, update record values, and delete records and fields. And, like themes in a view, all fields in a table do not have to display. You can hide fields if you like. You can also assign different names (aliases) to fields to make the field names more descriptive. For example, instead of having a field called Pop2000, you can create an alias and call the field Population 2000.

Charts
Charts display tabular data graphically. In ArcView, charts are fully integrated with tables and views so you can choose the table records (theme features) you want displayed on the chart by simply clicking on them. You can also get information from charts. In the charts below, for example, you could use the Identify tool to click on a pie piece or a column and all the attribute information from the associated record in the table would display in a popup window.

ArcView supports six types of charts: area, bar, column, line, pie, and x,y scatter. You can customize charts to meet your presentation needs, and you can include them in your map layout for printing or publishing.

Layouts
Layouts are documents on which you can arrange views, tables, charts, and images as graphic elements. They are the maps people think of when they think of GIS. Layouts can be sent to a printer or plotter to create a hard copy product. Because ArcView layouts are linked to the data they display, any changes you make to the data are automatically reflected in the layout. Important cartographic map components like neatlines, north arrows, scale bars, and legends (keys) can be placed on layouts. When creating an ArcView layout, you can also customize the layout page "layout" to control such things as page size, page units, orientation, and margins. Additionally, with the appropriate software, you can export layouts to popular drawing program and graphics formats.

Image Data Sources

ArcView can read many image formats as well as ArcInfo's raster data format, called a grid. Image themes do not have attribute tables, but you can still manipulate their display with the Image Legend Editor. Image theme formats supported by ArcView are TIFF, TIFF/LZW, ERDAS, BSQ, BIL, BIP, RLC, JPEG, Mr. Sid and Sun rasterfiles. Supported image data sources include satellite data, digital aerial photographs, and scanned data such as base maps.

Feature Data Sources

Shapefiles are ArcView's native file format for geographic features and attribute data. Shapefiles generally draw faster than other theme sources and you can edit them (move, reshape, add, and delete features and change attribute values) to reflect changes in the source data.

Any of the feature data sources ArcView supports can be converted to a shapefile and then modified.

In the example below, the county coverage contains a set of point features (labelpoint), and two sets of different polygon features (region.cnty and polygon).

ArcView can read feature data stored in any of the following formats: shapefiles, coverages, dBASE tables of x,y coordinates, text files of x,y coordinates, and CAD drawings. (To access a CAD drawing, you must first install ArcView's optional CAD Reader extension.)

Geographic Features
Real world objects, whether natural or man-made, are called features when they are represented on a map. Each map feature has a location, shape, and symbol that represents one or more of its characteristics. Features can be points, lines, or polygons.

Schools, traffic lights, crime locations, and park benches are examples of point features. Points represent objects that have discrete locations and are too small to be depicted as areas. Freeways, streets, pipelines, and waterways are examples of line features. Lines represent objects that have length but are too narrow to be depicted as areas. Parks, census tracts, postal codes, and trade areas are examples of polygon (or area) features. Polygons represent objects too large to be depicted as points or lines.

Feature Attributes
In ArcView, features are stored in a database along with information describing them. The descriptive information stored with a feature is called the feature's attributes. Attributes of a street might include its name, street type, length, street code, number of lanes, and pavement type. The attributes of a park may be its name, area, hours of operation, and maintenance schedule. Because features and their attributes are linked, you can easily access the attributes for any feature or locate any feature from its attributes. Attributes are displayed in a spreadsheet-like ArcView document called a Table.

View Display Properties

With ArcView, you control how your views look. You can change the color of the view's background, or you can keep the default white background. You can also change the font and symbol styles used in the view's Table of Contents.

Changing a View's Background Color

The default view background color is gray. Sometimes, however, you may want to use a background color that provides more visual interest or conveys meaning. Changing the view's background color is as easy as setting the view's properties. In the View Properties dialog (accessed by choosing Properties from the View menu) there is a setting called Background Color. Clicking the Select Color button displays a Color Picker from which you can choose a color for the background of your view. When you click OK in the View Properties dialog, the view's background displays with the color you selected.

In the view below, the background color was changed to blue (for water). The background color is maintained when the view is displayed in a layout.

Changing the Style of the Table of Contents

In ArcView, you can customize the appearance of the view's Table of Contents (TOC). You can control line symbol flatness, line and polygon symbol length, and text attributes (the font and font size and style) displayed. On the View menu there is a choice called TOC Style. When you select this choice, the Table of Contents Style Settings dialog displays.

This dialog gives you control over style elements in your TOC. You can make your line symbols flat or give them strong or moderate zigzags . You have four options for the length of line and polygon symbols, from short to very long . You can change the size, style, and font of the text, but this changes the text in the TOC only, not text in the view's map display area. You cannot save custom TOC style settings to legend files (.avl) in the Data Publisher version.

Adding Text to your Map

Text labels are a key component of a theme's display. Labels are useful for giving map readers a geographic point of reference so that they can identify features in the theme.

You can interactively generate text labels for features using the Label tool, or generate them automatically with the Auto-label function. Furthermore, you can use callout, bullet leader, banner, and highway shield label styles, to name a few. After you've added a text label, you can change its color, size, and font in the Legend Editor or by using the Show Symbol Window menu item. To get to some of these functions you will need to toggle the advanced interface button on the Global GIS dialog.

The Text Tools

Text tools are used to add descriptive text to features on a view. To use the Text tools, you type the text you want to add into the Text Properties dialog.

There are six Text tools contained in a dropdown menu on the toolbar. There are Text tools available for drop-shadow text and spline text. The table below shows the Text tools and examples of how they look in the view. To create text in the callout and bullet leader styles, you must click in the view where you want the text and drag to the desired length.

The Label Tools

The Label dropdown tools give you many ways to label theme features. The table below shows each Label tool, how the label appears in the view, and the name of the label type.

With callout , bullet leader , and banner tools , you can make attractive labels that are clearly associated with features. To create callout and bullet leader labels, you must click in the view where you want the label and drag to the desired label length. To create the other types of labels, simply click in the view where you want the label. You can set the theme's label field in the theme's property dialog.

Customizing Labels
When you're adding text and labels to several themes in a view, you can save time by editing the default settings for ArcView's Text and Label tools. By customizing text and label color and font defaults, you control how they appear when you add them to a view, and you avoid having to do a lot of subsequent editing. The Default Settings for Text and Label Tools dialog is accessed by choosing Text and Label Defaults from the Graphics menu.

To change the settings for a particular tool, click on the tool's icon on the left side of the dialog, then uncheck the Use Symbol Window settings for text check box. The dialog will change to show the options for the tool you've selected. For example, the top graphic below shows the default settings for the callout text tool, and the bottom graphic shows the default settings for the generic square highway shield.

When you specify default settings for a particular label or text tool, those settings will be used when you apply the tool in the view. If you want to change font or other settings after you've added text to the view, you can double-click on the label or text to display the Symbol Window, then edit the label's appearance using the options in the palettes

Labeling Data Based on an Attribute

You can use values in a theme attribute table as text labels. To do this, you open the Theme Properties dialog box. This dialog is accessed by choosing Properties from the Theme menu. Inside the dialog, you specify the field whose values you want to use as text labels and the label's position on the feature. You can also set the label to scale with the theme, so that when you zoom in and out on features, the labels change size also. Below, a field called Name is used to label the theme's features with their county names.

You can use the Font Palette in the Symbol Window to set the size, style, and font of text labels before you create them, or you can change these properties later. It is a good idea to choose simple text fonts for text labels. Such fonts enhance a theme's display and increase map readability. Using hard-to-read fonts or using too many different fonts for the themes in a view may distract the map reader. A quick way to label a feature with an attribute name is to use the Tag button This will display the name of the feature. .

Theme Display Properties

In ArcView, you can symbolize theme features in a number of ways. Varying the color, shape, and fill patterns of different feature types can help your audience interpret your maps. When creating theme symbology, you should always choose colors, shapes, and patterns that enhance the map reader's ability to distinguish between different areas on the map display. A clear legend facilitates map interpretation. A map that is not understandable is one that is of no use.

Creating a Default Legend

When you add a theme to a view, ArcView searches the data's folder for a legend file with the same name as the shapefile. Any legend (.avl) file with the same name in the same directory as a given shapefile is applied automatically. For example, if you have a shapefile called Country.shp in the same folder as a legend file called Country.avl, when you load Country.shp, ArcView loads and applies Country.avl. Of course, you can still modify the legend in the Legend Editor after loading the data, if you like.

Changing Default Symbols

To change the colors and shapes that represent a theme's features (its symbology), you use the Legend Editor. You open the Legend Editor by double-clicking on the theme name or symbol in the view's Table of Contents. Inside the Legend Editor, you can choose new symbology and preview changes before applying them to the entire theme. Here, the Legend Editor was used to change the symbology of the shopping centers. The symbols were changed from blue circles to red squares.

Symbol Palettes
To edit theme symbols, you access the Symbol Window by double-clicking the theme's symbol in the Legend Editor. The Symbol Window contains five palettes and the Palette Manager, which you use to save and load custom legend files. The palettes allow you to choose from a variety of polygon fill patterns, line patterns, point symbols, text fonts, and colors to represent theme features.

Classifying your Data

You can group features into classes using the Legend Editor. The default classification groups data into five categories based on the Natural Breaks, or Jenks, method of classification. However, you can easily change the classification. In the example below, the Counties theme has been grouped into five categories based on the Pop_93 field in its theme table. You can display classes with a color ramp (in which colors change gradually from the first to the last symbol). The color ramp used below starts with light red for the class representing the lowest population and ends with dark red for the class representing the highest population.

Classification Types
When you classify feature data, classification method and the number of classes you specify greatly affects how a theme is displayed and interpreted. In the examples below, notice how the theme's display changes when the Pop_93 field values are grouped into five classes using different classification methods. The features have been grouped with the Natural Breaks, Equal Area (the area they occupy), Standard Deviation, Equal Interval (the interval between classes), and the Quantile (quantity of features in each class) classification methods.

Table Display Properties

ArcView allows the user to do simple manipulations on the attribute table of a theme. The attribute table of an active theme can be opened by clicking on the Attribute Table button in the View window.

The user then has a selection of functions that can be used to narrow the data into subsets. These include sorting, querying and simple summarizing of the data. Also, the user can specify ArcView to create a chart from the selected data using the Chart button .

Sort
The attribute tables can be sorted in ascending or descending alphanumeric order. Sorting is done by activating a field in the attribute table and selecting the ascending or descending button.

Selecting Features
The selection of attribute features in a table can be a simple yet powerful method of manipulating the data. There are three basic selection tools available as buttons Select All , Select None , and Switch Selection. Used with the Query Builder and the Sort options, the data in a table can be rearranged and edited for use in charts. Select All selects all the records in the attribute table. Select None will deselect any files that have been selected. Switch selection will cause all selected files to be unselected and any files that are not selected to be selected. Any feature that is selected in the table will be highlighted in yellow on the map in the view.

Query Builder
The Query Builder allows the user to select records by searching fields for a specified value. Clicking on the Query Builder button brings up a dialog box.

The user can build an equation of combinations of the various fields of the table and the strings (words are identified as character strings) and numbers that describe the field.

Watch the parentheses that are included in the equation, ArcView is very particular about proper use of parentheses to separate expressions in the equation. All strings need to be surrounded by quotation marks("), ex. Brazil = "Brazil". After a query has been run, the Promote button selected records to the top of the table. can be used to move all the

Summarize
The Summarize button allows the user to create a table of statistics for an activated field in a table. The statistics that can be performed depends on the field, but include average, sum, minimum, maximum, standard deviation, variance, first, last and count.

The temporary table that is created can then be used to create a chart.

Layout Display Properties

A layout is the most efficient and effective manner to output your GIS work in ArcView. Layout allows the user to arrange a variety of views, tables and charts onto a page that can be printed. Layout also can add scale bars, north arrows, grids and various other features necessary for proper display of GIS products. A typical layout follows.

Insert Objects
ArcView layout allows the user to insert objects that have been created in other sections of the project, such as views, tables and charts. It is also possible to insert north arrows, scale bars and legend bars. ArcView also has the option to insert an image file in various formats, including .bil, .bip .gif, .bmp, .gif and others. Creates a view frame - inserts a view into the layout, layout view remains linked to the actual view and any changes will be echoed in the layout Creates a legend frame - inserts a legend that corresponds to the theme Creates a scale bar frame - inserts a scale bar that corresponds to the view, scale is in the map units specified in the view Creates a north arrow frame - inserts a correctly located north arrow Creates a chart frame - inserts a chart, the layout chart remains tied to the chart view and any changes to the chart will be echoed in the layout Creates a table frame- inserts a table, the layout table remains linked to the table view and any changes to the table will be echoed in the layout

Creates a picture frame - inserts an image into the layout

Move Object Front/ Move Object Back And Group/ Ungroup

Move Object Front - moves the active object to the front of the view Move Object Back - moves active object behind other objects Group - groups all selected features together so that they are no longer individual objects Ungroup - ungroups objects that have been grouped together

In the above view of a layout, the view of South America is moved to the back and the north arrow and the chart are moved to the front.

Graticules
Creating a grid across the view can help to better reference the view. This can be especially important when printing out a map for later use.

The Graticule button allows the user to create latitude and longitude lines on the map view. The user can specify the interval between the latitude and longitude lines. The graticule lines will be appropriate to the projection of the view.

Simplify
The Simplify command in ArcView allows the user to separate parts of a view (a view, a chart view and a table view) into individual components for editing. The Simplify command, available only if a view is active, is located under Graphics:Simplify.

Simplify is an easy way to edit the symbols and text of a view. When a view is simplified, it is not longer linked to the actual view that it represents. Any changes made after an object is simplified will be made only to that object and not to the related view.