GIS4043 Lab Assignment

This was our first lab assignment for the Intro to GIS. Creating our first map.

Process for building World Population Map

1. Copied from R:\Intro2GIS\OverviewArcGIS.zip to my S:\ drive and unzipped the files to S:\OverviewArcGIS\. These were the 10 files needed to create the layers for the world population map. Five shape files for the world countries and five shape files for the cities.

2.  Started ArcMap from the edesktop, and once ArcMap finished loading, I clicked on the Add Data button on the toolbar, selected add data from the drop down menu and browsed to my S:\ drive and found World_Countries.shp and click add.

3. Next selected Add Data again, and repeated the process as step 2, except selected Cities.shp and click add.

4. With World_Countries and Cities in my table of contents, I clicked on the small symbol under the Cities layer, and a symbol selector menu appeared. I selected a black square and adjusted to a size 2 for the symbol, then clicked OK.

5. Next, I right click on the World_Countries layer, selected properties and then selected the symbology tab. Clicked on quantities on the left column (Show) in the layer properties box, and select graduated colors. In the Fields box drop down menu choose POP2007, and changed the Classes to 7, meaning 7 different color groups for each population class. In the Color Ramp drop down, I selected the green to blue transition colors, then clicked OK.

6. Next I right clicked on the word Layers in the table of contents, select properties, then clicked on the Frame tab, and on the drop down menu under Background, select the blue color to change the background color. Then click OK.

7. Now from the menu bar, select View, then select Layout View. Also go to File on the menu bar, select Page and Print Setup, and select Landscape, then OK.

8. Also from the menu bar, select Insert, and click on North Arrow, and I selected the simple black arrow, and I placed it to the lower left of my world map just above Antarctica. On the same Insert, I clicked on Scale Bar, chose Scale Line 1, clicked Properties, the change the units to kilometers, dragging it to the lower left of the map. Click on Insert again, click Text to insert the title, World Population 2007, then Insert and again to add the legend, 1 column with World Countries and Cites in the legend.

9. Next, click File, Save As, and saved the map file as World_Map.mxd. The mxd extension, tells me that this is an ArcMap document. After saving, click on File, Export Map, and export it as a jpeg file.