Homework

• Hands-on Exercises from Textbook

• Warning reminder: ArcGIS wants to write files to disk. At home there should be no issue about your rights to do so. In the lab, however, you may need to specify your own workspace on the C:/ drive. Point file saves to C:\Documents and Settings\your_unity_id\Localsettings\temp\.

  Chapter 10: Selecting Features by Location

  • Exercise 10a, p. 264: Using Location Queries
    • Show map on p. 268.

  • Exercise 10b, p. 269: Combining Attribute and Location Queries
    • Note in Step 9 to turn Neighborhoods back on before proceeding.
    • Show map at Step 25, p. 279.

  Chapter 11: Preparing Data for Analysis

  • Exercise 11a, p. 286 Dissolving Features
    • "Dissolving" means aggregating/erasing interior boundaries like Stands, leaving only larger boundaries like the five Lease ID areas in this example.
    • Show map, Step 14, p. 293

  • Exercise 11b, p. 294: Creating Graphs
    • Show map with graph in layout view as in Step 12, p. 298

  • Exercise 11c, p. 300: Clipping Layers
    • "Clipping" means trimming the features of one layer at the boundaries of another, such as clipping highways at the border of the state Oklahoma, as shown on p. 300.
    • In Step 11, make sure Leases Selection rather than Leases is the clip layer.
    • Show map at Step 15, p. 305.

  • Exercise 11d, p. 307: Exporting Data
    • Note that when you export data to a .mdx file, you are prompted also if you want to add the data as a layer to the map (see Step 10).
    • Show map at Step 15, p. 312.

• Be prepared to answer the following questions from Ormsby, Chapters 10 (Selecting Features by Location) and 11 (Preparing Data for Analysis).

  CHAPTER 10: SELECTING FEATURES BY LOCATION
  
  1. What is "selecting by location" as opposed to "selecting by attribute"? P. 262
  2. Give several examples of spatial relationships. P. 263
  3. What is the selection layer (ex., neighborhoods on p. 266)? Pp. 263, 266
  4. What is the reference layer (ex., freeways on p. 266)? Pp. 263, 266
  5. How do you select by location in ArcMap? Pp. 265-268
  6. How do you select by location and by attribute? P. 267
  7. In Layer Properties, what does the Definition Query tab do? 
  How is it different from an "attribute query"?  Pp. 276-277
  8. What is a spatial join? Pp. 280-281
  
  CHAPTER 11: PREPARING DATA FOR ANALYSIS
  1. What three data prep operations are discussed in this chapter? P. 284
  2. When might a public administrator wish to dissolve features? (Not in book)
  3. How do you dissolve features? Pp. 287-291
  4. How do you create a graph based on an attribute? Pp.295-297
  5. What does clipping do? P. 300
  6. How do you clip a layer? How do you create a new layer from a 
  selection? p. 301-306
  7. What is another way to create a new layer, besides dissolving 
  and clipping? P. 307
  8. How do you export a selection? Pp. 307-312
  

Explore

Make sure you are familiar with the ArcGIS online help system:

Bring up ArcGIS and click on the Help button, then "ArcGIS Desktop Help", Click on the Index tab on the left; successively enter this week's topics (querying, joining, relating) into the query box. When a related topic appears in the results display area, double click on it to bring up that topic in the main display area. Notice the little arrows are clickable, causing the corresponding topic to expand.