Suppose that you work for the City of Mapplewood Maintenance Department, which plans to add some utilities and upgrade others in a recently renovated part of the town. You have been asked to create a map showing the existing utilities to use for planning the additions and upgrades. There is currently no single map that shows all the utilities. Your task is to locate the necessary data sources and add them to a view as themes so you can display them together.

Step 1

Start ArcView

If ArcView is not running, start ArcView. In the Welcome to ArcView GIS dialog, click on the Open an existing project and click OK.

If ArcView is already running, select Open Project from the File menu.

Navigate to the /home/u2/oc3902/lab0/introav/basics/lesson02 folder and open the ArcView project l02_ex1.apr.

Because no views have been created yet, you see an empty Project window.

Step 2

Create a new view

With the Views icon highlighted, click the New button (or, double-click the Views icon).

A new, empty view window, View1, opens. You can resize and reposition this window anytime you need to.

The gray area on the left side of the view is the Table of Contents. It's empty now, but when you add a theme to the view, the theme's name, the symbol used to draw it, and a check box indicating whether it's currently displayed will appear in the Table of Contents.

Step 3

The Add Theme dialog box

From the View menu, select Add Theme. The Add Theme dialog box displays.

Navigate to lesson02 in the Directories list. ArcView lists the geographic data sources available in this directory.

When Feature Data Source is selected in the lower left dropdown list (Data Source Types), only data sources containing features (i.e., points, lines, polygons) are listed.

You see four data sources: bldgs, lights.shp, sewers, and waterln. The first of these, bldgs, is an ArcInfo coverage containing more than one type of feature. It appears with a folder icon in the list. Later, you'll open the folder to see the feature types. The second data source, lights.shp, is an ArcView shapefile (.shp is the default file extension given to ArcView shapefiles). The other two data sources are ArcInfo coverages.

Step 4

Add a theme to the view document

Now, you'll add a theme from the waterln data source.

Double-click waterln to add it to the view as a theme. The theme's name and a symbol appear in the view Table of Contents.

Your view now contains one theme, Waterln. By default, ArcView doesn't draw the theme. To display the theme, turn it on by clicking its check box.

ArcView draws the features in the theme (lines) using the current symbol. When you add a theme to a view, ArcView randomly assigns a color to the theme. Therefore, the Waterln theme may be a different color in your view.

Turning a theme on simply allows it to display. A theme doesn't have to be turned on for you to perform ArcView operations on it, and turning a theme off doesn't remove it from the view.

Step 5

Add other themes to the view document

Next, you'll add themes based on the bldgs, lights.shp, and sewers data sources.  You can do this either using View within the menu bar, or by using the add theme button.  We will use the button this time.

Click the Add Theme button to display the Add Theme dialog box again. If necessary, select your drive containing the exercise data, then navigate to lesson02 in the Directories list.

You see the same list of data sources.

Step 6

Select several themes in the Add Theme dialog box

Click once on the bldgs folder icon to open it.

You see two feature types listed, polygon and labelpoint. ("Polygon" is the ArcInfo term for a 2-dimensional feature. A "label point" is a point that identifies a polygon and shares all its attributes.) You want to create a polygon theme to represent buildings, so you'll choose the polygon data source.

Click once on polygon to highlight it. Hold down the Shift key and click once on lights.shp and once on sewers. All three data sources are highlighted.

Step 7

Add the themes and turn them on

Click OK to add these three themes to the view. Click on the check box next to their names to draw each theme.

Your view now contains three additional themes: the Sewers theme containing line features, the Lights.shp theme containing points, and the Bldgs theme containing polygons.

Step 8

Select an image data source

Now you can use these themes to plan for the utilities upgrade. But first, you'll add an aerial photograph of this part of the city to the view as a backdrop.

Click the Add Theme button. If necessary, navigate again to lesson02 in the Directories list. Click on the dropdown arrow for the Data Source Types list, then select Image Data Source.

The aerial photograph image source appears in the list on the left side of the dialog box. (The .bil ending indicates a type of image format.)

Step 9

Add the image to the view and turn it on

Double-click airphoto.bil. ArcView adds the aerial photograph image to the view. Click the check box for the Airphoto.bil theme to turn it on.

ArcView draws the photograph as a black-and-white image in the view.

The image draws on top of the other themes. That's because ArcView first draws the theme listed at the bottom of the Table of Contents, then draws each theme listed above it. Thus, the Airphoto.bil theme draws last. You can change the drawing order by dragging themes up or down in the Table of Contents.

Step 10

Make the image theme active

You want the image to display in the background (behind the other themes) so you'll drag it to the bottom of the Table of Contents. To do so, you must first make the Airphoto.bil theme active. Notice that the Waterln theme is currently the active theme.

Click once on the Airphoto.bil theme in the Table of Contents to make it active. Now it appears raised in the Table of Contents.

Step 11

Change the theme draw order

Click the Airphoto.bil theme's name (or the raised gray area surrounding it), hold down the left mouse button and drag to the bottom of the Table of Contents, then release the button.

ArcView draws the image theme first this time, then draws all the other themes on top of it. 

You can see how easy it is to create a view and add themes to it from a variety of data sources. Once you've added themes to a view, you can change the appearance of the view by turning themes on and off and by moving themes up and down in the Table of Contents.

When you add a theme based on a feature data source, a theme attribute table (or simply theme table) is also added to the project. A theme table contains descriptive information about the features in the theme. The theme table is like a spreadsheet or a matrix and is formatted in rows and columns, called records and fields, respectively. Each field contains all the values for an attribute; each record represents a single feature in the theme. Because attributes are linked to the features they describe, you can access them by clicking on a feature in the view, or you can find a feature in the view by clicking on its record in the table.

Let’s assume now that the City Maintenance Department has decided to dig trenches for sewer lines on some of the properties. Your task is to retrieve the address information for these properties so notification letters can be sent to their owners. The Bldgs theme attribute table contains the address information you need. You'll make this theme active, then open its attribute table. 

Step 12

Make a theme active

Click on the Bldgs name or its legend symbol in the Table of Contents of View 1 to make it active.

The theme appears raised in the Table of Contents.

Step 13

Open the theme table

Click the Open Theme Table button on the View button bar.

A table window opens containing the attributes of the Bldgs theme. When the table opens, you see the first four fields: Shape, Area, Perimeter, and Bldgs#. The Shape field tells you the type of feature (i.e., point, line, or polygon) the theme represents.

The table also contains addresses and owners for all the buildings in the theme. To see them, you'll use the scrolling bars.

Step 14

Explore the Table document

Using the scroll bar at the bottom of the table, scroll to the right.

The address information is stored in the Address, City, State, and Zip columns (fields); the owner names are stored in the Owner field. (Later, you'll resize the table so you can see these fields at the same time.)

You know that the city plans to dig trenches for sewer lines on the properties of the large buildings along the left side of the view.

Step 15

Resize and reposition the view and table documents

Before you select the buildings, you'll resize and reposition the view and table so you can see both of them at the same time.

Make View1 active by clicking on its title bar.  Move it to the upper left corner of the ArcView window by clicking and dragging on the title, then resize it so that it fills the upper portion of this window.  The resizing is done by clicking on any of the sides of the view and moving them out or in as desired.

Make the Attributes of Bldgs table active. Move it to the lower left corner of the ArcView window, then resize it so that it fills the lower portion of this window.

Step 16

Change the table display

You'll change the table display to show the address and owner information.

If necessary, use the scroll bar at the bottom of the table to scroll to the right until you see the Address and Owner fields.

Step 17

Use the Select Feature tool

Now you'll use the Select Feature tool to select the large buildings along the left side of the view.

Make the view active by clicking on its title bar. On the View toolbar, click the Select Feature tool, then click on the large building in the upper left corner of the view.

The building highlights in the view and its record highlights in the table. ArcView scrolls the table so the highlighted record displays at the top of the table.

Step 18

Select more than one feature

The first building is selected. Now you want to highlight the rest of the large buildings along the left side of the view.

Hold down the Shift key, then click on each of the other large buildings along the left-side of the view.

ArcView selects and highlights the buildings (there are four in all) in the view and their corresponding records in the table.

Step 19

Promote the selected theme attribute table records to the top

Because the table is large, you can't see all of the highlighted (selected) records. To gather all the highlighted records together in the table, you'll use the Promote function.

Make the table window active by clicking on its title bar. Click the Promote button on the Table button bar. The highlighted records display at the top of the table.

The highlighted records contain address information for the selected buildings. This information can be used to notify owners about the city's plans to put sewer lines on their properties.

Task 4  Give the names and the addresses of each of the owners of these buildings.  By turning themes on an off, identify which of these buildings have sewer connections.

Task 5  Let’s assume that you wish to measure the length of an existing sewer connection.  Make View 1active, identify the Measure tool on the toolbar, click on it, and then measure the distance from the uppermost building on the left-hand side of the view, along the sewer line, to the point where the connection to the next building joins the line.  Note: This measurement will need to be made in two segments.  To do this, you need to single click on the point where you will start you measurement, then single click at the end of each segment.  You will note that the length of each segment together with a running total is given at the bottom of the Project Window.  To make a new series of measurements, double click and then go to your new start point. 

Step 20

Check extensions and close the project

Go to the File menu and choose Extensions.  These can be enabled or disabled by clicking the boxes on the left hand side.  Normally, the necessary extensions needed for a task are enabled at the start of a session or project.

Now close the project without saving. From the File menu, choose Close All, then using the File menu again, choose Close Project. Click No when you're prompted to save your changes.