Keyboard shortcut to temporarily not snap to edges

Problem: You are editing some data and most of the time you want to snap to edges. When you do not want to snap to edges it is quick and you want a keyboard shortcut instead of moving your mouse to click on the icon.

Solution: Hold shift when you don't want to snap! It is that easy.


I learned this while listening to the ESRI editing videos from Summer 2013 UC and I have already started using this shortcut.

Temporary Break

As you can tell, I have taken a break from this blog for almost 2 months. Since then, I have gotten a new job several states away. I am still looking for a place to live so it might be another month or two before I get back to this blog. I have several ideas ready ( I even have one post in drafts for an update to my data driven pages post ) with cartography topics.

My new position is more data editing so my post will move more in that direction. If you have questions or a topic you would like me to discuss let me know.

Tiffany

Poorly Designed Infographics

I found this site from a post in the forum of the MOOC class, Geospatial Revolution I am taking.

16 useless infographics . This gives you examples of poorly designed maps.  I have placed below the worst of the worst.

This map is 3 maps on top of each other. Sometimes you can overlay data, but not in this case. 

This map has four people representing roughly 43,000 nurses and then jumps by 28 more people for only a 3,000 increase in nurses!

This is showing when the Android is released. The long the color block the more usage? It does not explain much here. 

This map is showing two different thing one for child poverty and the other for schools needing improvement. It looks like the left is subcounties and the right is of counties. 

This could have been a interesting map if the slices corresponded with the amount of time people spend on the site. This makes it look like we all use each website for the same amount of time. 

Using Shift for Cartography

Problem: You want to slightly move your legend or another element in your map.

Solution: Hold the shift down while using the arrow keys to move your intended element.

I know this is a short and easy post today, but while using this trick today I thought some people might not know how to do this. This can save some headache when doing tedious work to your maps.

Smoothing Tool in Advanced Editor

Problem:
You have many polygons that are not smoothing and for aesthetics they need to be smoothed.

Solution:

1. Start an Edit session for the shapefile that needs to be smoothed. 
2. Select the individual polygon or multiple polygons that need to be smoothed.
   
3. Add the Advanced Editor toolbar.
4. Select the last icon, Smooth. 
   
5. A dialog box will appear and you will choose a positive number for the offset. This number will depend on the polygon. For this example I choose 1, but I have also done 10 to make the polygon smooth. 
   
6. Your final result should look smooth. If you select too high of an offset, this can drastically change the shape of your polygon. As you can see below the shape is still the same but the rough edges are gone. 
   

Other GIS Blogs

I have compiled a list of blogs that I have used that I think are very good:

• GIS Tips and Tricks: http://www.aubreyrhea.net/gis/ - This one is no longer updated and is for 9.X, but it is still very useful. 

• F yeah GIS: http://fyeahgis.tumblr.com/

• CartoTalk: http://www.cartotalk.com/ - This is a forum for cartographers. There is a thread where you can upload your map and get critiques. 

• GIS Wiki: http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page 
• GIS Wiki GIS blogs: http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_GIS-related_Blogs - A list of more GIS blogs. 

• A Cartographer's Toolkit: http://www.gretchenpeterson.com/blog/

Let me know if you know of any other great GIS blogs!

Creating a Square Buffer

Problem: You are asked to create a square buffer for your project area.

Solution:
1. Create a point shapefile where you want the center of your square buffer to be.

2. Create a normal buffer with the desired radius. Geoprocessing-> Buffer.

3. Navigate to Minimum Boundary Geometry Tool 

4. Fill out with your normal buffer as the input feature and choose Rectangle by Width for a rectangle buffer. This buffer will be the same radius as your normal buffer. 

5. The result: 

Utilizing Placement Properties for Labels

Problem: Your label for your shapefile is on top of your data. There are two ways to correct this, Placement Properties or Maplex Label Engine. This blog post will discuss Placement Properties. I will discuss Maplex Label Engine in a later post.

Solution: 

1. In the Layer Properties dialog box, navigate to the Labels tab. 

2. Click on Placement Properties 

3. Change Label Weight and Feature Weight to both Medium. 

4. Click OK and OK and your label should now be off to the side of the data. 

How to cut a polygon

Problem: You are given a polygon that needs to be edited based on specifications from your client.

Solution:

1. Start an edit session on the polygon that needs cutting. 
   
2. Select the polygon that needs to be cut, the same one that the edit session was started. 
3. In the edit toolbar, select split polygon 

     4.  On the polygon where you want to cut, click on one side and draw a line to the other side of the polygon and double click. If you are wanting to cut in the middle of a polygon, this will need to be done twice. One line for each side of the portion to be cut. 

     5. Deselect and then select the portion that you just created using the split polygon tool. Click delete. 

Saving a .mxd in an earlier version than ArcGIS 10.1

Problem: Your colleague has an older version of ArcGIS and they can't open your .mxd.

Solution:

1. Navigate to File and Save a Copy
   
2. In the drop down menu choose the appropriate version of ArcMap. 
   

Moving data source text when using ESRI's Imagery

Problem: You want to use ESRI's Imagery, but you want to do your own data source; not have the data source plastered on the imagery.

Solution:

1. Navigate to Insert
2. Click Dynamic Text
3. Click Service Layer Credits. This will make the text movable so you can move it to where you want to acknowledge your data. 
   

Data Driven Pages

Problem: You have a long study area and therefore, will need to create many maps. This can be very time consuming, but with data driven pages this is very simple. Only one map will have to be created and you will not have to move the data to a different section of your study area.

Solution:

1. Have shapefile that will allow you to split up your study area. This can be done by creating a fishnet or using Public Land Survey System (PLSS) data. For this example, I will use PLSS data. If creating a fishnet, skip to step 3. 
2. If using PLSS data you will need to select only the PLSS sections needed in your study area.
1. Using the select tool, click on the PLSS sections that hold data 
2. Right click on the PLSS file in the Table of Contents and choose export data. 
3. A new shapefile of only the PLSS sections with data is added to the Table of Contents. 
3. Add in the Data Driven Pages toolbar

1. In the main menu select Customize

2. Toolbars 

3. Data Driven Pages

    4.  How to fill out the Data Driven Page Setup

          1. Click the first button.

          2. In the Definitions Tab, ensure that there is a check mark in the Enable Data Driven Pages.

          3. Data Frame should be layers.

          4. The layer should be the exported PLSS data or the fishnet created.

          5. Field name should be Section, click OK.

   5. Viewing the different pages

          1. In the toolar, it will show what page you are currently viewing. There will be arrows to skip to the first or last page or in increasing or decreasing the page by 1.

  6. Viewing the pages in layout for mapping only; only 1 PLSS or fishnet section at a time.

           1. Open the Data Frame Properties in View

           2. Navigate to Data Frame

           3. In the Clipping Section at the bottom of the page, in the drop down, choose clip to current data    driven page extent. 

           4. click OK. 

Changing the Symbology for all values at once

Problem: You have a shapefile with a large amount of values and you want to change the size or outline color of all the values. If your values are more than 5, this can be very time consuming to click each individual value and change the size or outline color.

Solution: 

1. Double click on the .shp to open the layer properties.
2. Navigate to the symbology tab.
3. Select all the values you want to change and right click.
4. select Properties for All Symbols.
   

Setting Intervals on Raster Symbology Data

Problem: You found some raster data and have a color ramp displayed, but you only have a range of the different data. You want to be able to visually see what the different numbers in the data are by the colors. This can be done by adding intervals. 

Solution: 

1. In the Table of Contents, double click on the raster data to open the layer properties. 
2. Navigate to the symbology tab and select a color that will best represent your data in the color ramp drop down menu. 
   
3. Once you have selected your colors click labeling to bring up the advanced labeling dialog box (See above picture, top right arrow). 
4. From here you can select the number of intervals. This will show how your data is divided up and labeled by color.
1. There are two ways to divide up your data. The first radio button allows the user to select how many intervals and lets the computer decide how much data is in each interval. Click generate.
2. The second radio button allows the user to select how much data is in each interval. An example is 250 meters per interval. Click generate.
5.  You will be able to see how your data will be split up to determine which option is best. For this example, I have selected 7 intervals using the first radio button. Hit OK when you are finished.
   
   
   
   6. In the layer properties click apply and then OK. 
   7. Now you are able to see that the dark brown area is 2,496 meters above sea level. 
   
   
   

Introduction to GIS

This blog will hopefully help others when problems arise in ArcGIS. A Geographical Information System (GIS) is simply to manipulate geographic data. ArcGIS is one software that manipulates the data as well as the option to present the data as maps. The making of maps is cartography. The data could include census information, calculating statistics of the data, displaying states that vote republican or democrat, to name a few. Several layers of data can be used to illustrate the point. A variety of classes can enhance the visualization of the map.

This blog is a compilation of information of my solutions when I have problems in ArcGIS from my own work.