ArcGIS Intro

This lab consisted of doing five exercises in an introduction to ArcGIS. Prior to this introduction I have never experienced using ArcGIS and was very confused with the first few steps. I started coasting through it after the first steps and noticed that the pictures in the tutorial were really helpful. The first exercise guided us through the basics such as knowing the difference between layout view and data view, and how to insert data layers, titles, legends, scales, and a compass. I also learned how to zoom into areas to see whether or not a school lies within a noise contour, and how to choose a graphic for the features on our map. 

The second exercise was more complex in my opinion since it had various different components to it. First, I added a new data frame because I was focusing on another aspect of the area. In this data frame I focused on the land noise contour. I was trying to figure out what the majority of the land within the noise contour was used for, and after looking at the graph, I concluded that residential areas make up most of the land use in the noise contour. 

The next exercise focused more on the population density of the area. I used many tables to gather and join information of the population densities to display on the map. From the map, you can see that the majority of the population lies near the center of the map. You can also see that the arterials intersect near the center of the map, where the population is most dense. In the fourth exercise, I learned how to make and add a road, and how to make the street parallel to other streets, and how to add perfect tangent curves. I completed a street near the airport, and displayed the street names for the rest of the streets so that our first map is complete. 

The final exercise was to add the final touches to the other maps and make the information cleaner and easier to understand. This lab allowed me to lean a lot about ArcGIS and how it can be great to display information, but you must be very careful and cautious about your work. ArcGIS allows you to separate layers and data frames if you want to focus on only certain things, but in doing so, you have to go through many steps and if you do one little mistake in one of these steps, you may have to start all over again. Although ArcGIS requires one to know how to use many features, once they master the program, and are able to zip-though exercises, it can be a great program to help display information on maps.