ArcGIS Basics: (India and World Data)

Revised 24 January 2011
Tufts University
Author: Barbara Parmenter and Irina Rasputnis

1 - Introduction

2 - Mapping the GIS Center data server

3 - Using ArcCatalog

4 - Opening ArcMap and adding data layers

5 - Defining the general and symbology properties for a layer

6 – Setting a Coordinate System for the Data Frame

7 - Assigning proper layer names

8 - Drawing a layer based on an attribute field

9 - Selecting and Mapping the Largest Cities in India

10 - Using the Select by Attribute function

11 – Selecting Towns by their location relative to Railroads

12 – Labeling a layer based on an attribute field

13 - Using Large Scale Data – Kolkata (Calcutta)

14 - Using Data from ArcGIS Online

15 – Measuring Distance and Area and Drawing a Map to Scale

16 - Creating a layout for printing or graphic export

17 - Adding a data frame to show two or more maps on a layout

18 - Printing or exporting layouts

1 - Introduction

This tutorial shows you how to use the ArcMap module to create a simple map. ArcMap is one of the modules in ArcGIS Desktop. You use ArcMap to create maps, query data, perform analysis, and most of the other basic GIS operations. ArcMap is the module that you will use most frequently. The tutorial may take 3-4 hours to complete.

This tutorial is written to be done in the Mugar Computer lab or another Tufts campus computer lab. It is possible to do at home with the ArcGIS 9.3.1 student software on a PC, but in that case you should copy the data sets to a USB thumb drive or other external drive.

2 - Mapping the GIS Center data server

In this tutorial, you will be using data from the Tufts GIS Center data server. You must first map a network drive to this data server. To do this in Mugar Lab (Windows XP computers only):

  1. Go to My Computer. (In Mugar Lab, go to Start – Drives and Network Shares to access My Computer.) From the menu bar, select Tools →Map Network Drive.
  2. In the drop down menu labeled Drive: choose the drive letter M
  3. In the Folder: drop down menu manually enter \\quarry\gis\datasets\
  4. Leave the box checked Reconnect at logon.
  5. Click Finish.

Note: if you are in the Tufts GIS Center Lab in Tisch Library, the M: drive is already mapped and you can go to the next step.

Explore your new M: drive folder – you’ll see that it contains data sets for a number of different locations. We are going to be using data from India in this tutorial (in the Country\India folder path) as well as global data (in the World\ESRIDataMaps93\Vector folder path).

3 - Using ArcCatalog

ArcCatalog is a module of ArcGIS Desktop that allows you to manage GIS and related data sets. Using ArcCatalog, you can view available GIS data sets in a catalog tree similar to Windows Explorer, see what the data looks like (Preview tab), and read any available documentation that comes with the data (Metadata tab). You can also use ArcCatalog for copying, renaming, moving, and deleting GIS data sets. Because all GIS data layers actually consist of several files, using ArcCatalog is a better, easier, and more certain way tomanage GIS data than the normal Windows file management tools.

Starting ArcCatalog

Start ArcCatalog by going to Start – Programs – Applications – GIS Applications – ArcCatalog (note: In the GIS Center Lab in Tisch, go to Start – All Programs – GIS Applications – ArcGIS 9.3 – ArcCatalog. On home computers with the ArcView student license installed, the ArcGIS program may be under Programs– ArcGIS 9.3).

What you see in the catalog tree
The catalog tree on the left of the ArcCatalog window looks similar to a standard Windows file manager view, but the ArcCatalog tree only shows data that can be read by ArcGIS.

In Mugar Lab, you have to connect ArcCatalog to your M: drive data folder (in the GIS lab, the M: drive is already connected). To do this:

  1. Click on the Connect to Folder icon
  2. Choose the folder - datasets \\quarry\gis (M:) and click OK
Exploring the available data
  1. On the left side of the ArcCatalog window, navigate to the M: drive if it is not already visible, and continue to: M:\World\ESRIDataMaps93\Vector
  2. Click the cursor on the cities.sdc file. This is a data set showing world cities.
Reading metadata
  • Metadata is information about data. Click on the metadata tab for the cities.sdc file. When the metadata appears, you should see three more tabs - Description, Spatial, and Attributes. The first tab, Description, has general information - click on any of the bold text to see more information (e.g., scroll down and click on Status of the Data and Time Period for which Data is Relevant).
  • While still in the metadata area, click on the Spatial tab - this gives you information about the coordinate system and the area of the earth covered by this data set.
  • Click on the attributes tab to see the list of attributes. Again, you can click on any of the bold text to see more information - if it exists! Many agencies and data creators do not document their data well or at all. The data developer should document each data set, but sometimes he/she does not do this, or it may not be documented in detail. Metadata is critical to data users - without it, you may not know what a particular data layer represents, when it was created, if it is complete, what the attributes mean, or what format it is in.
  • Look at some of the other data sets in the World data folder – you will notice that many of them are not documented. Instead, you will see gray text saying something like (under Abstract) “Required: A brief narrative summary of the data set” – this is telling you what is required in that section by the Federal government’s metadata standards, but it has not been filled in by the author of the data set
  • Navigate to M:\Country\India\IndiaBaseMap.
  • The India_Base_Map data sets are accompanied by metadata documents in PDF format that can be found in the India_Base_Map\Description folder. This metadata is in a format that ArcCatalog does not read, but you can open it as you would any PDF document. Navigate to these PDF files using the normal file manager software (i.e., My Computer, not ArcCatalog) and look at them.
  • Note that several of the data sets (State, Town, District, and Sub-District) have metadata documents that describe census information.

To sum up, metadata is extremely important. The US Federal government has a metadata standard, as does the ISO ( But as you see, US state and local governments and foreign governments may or may not document their GIS data to the same standards.

Previewing geography
  • Back in ArcCatalog, navigate to the M:\Country\India\IndiaBaseMap folder, and click on the State.shp file.
  • Next click on the Preview tab above the right screen pane. You’ll see a map of the states of India.
  • Click on the Information tool () and then click on one of the states. You will see the information stored in the attribute table about that polygon. (Remember, the states.pdf file in the Description folder contained information about what these attribute table codes mean.)
  • Close the attribute table.
  • Use the zoom and pan tools () to zoom in and out and pan around in the preview map. With the zoom intool (magnifying glass with a plus sign), you use the mouse to draw a box around the area you want to zoom in to (click on one corner, keep the mouse button held down, and drag it to the opposite corner of the box before releasing). With the zoom-out tool, you also create a box - the current view will then be "zoomed out" to fit inside the box you created. With the pan tool, you hold down the mouse button while you pan any direction to move the map.
  • To get back to the first (default) view, you can click on the world icon () - this takes you to the full extent of that particular data layer.

A file ending in .shp is called shape file. This is a very common GIS data format, created by ESRI, the makers of ArcGIS. A shape file actually consists of several files (you will see this if you look at the same folder in a Windows file manager program - for state.shp, you would see state.shx, state.dbf, and state.prj), all of which are necessary for this GIS data set to be readable in a GIS software program). That's one reason why ArcCatalog is a better program than Windows File Manager for managing GIS data. If you copy state.shp in ArcCatalog to another folder, the ArcCatalog program knows to copy all the associated data files with it.

ArcCatalog View of the State shape file / Windows File Manager View of the State shape file
Previewing attribute tables
  • You can preview the attribute table (table of associated tabular information for a GIS data layer) by going down the Preview form and choosing Table. This shows all the records in the GIS layer. Scroll down and across to see the entire table.

Getting to know your data
Now use what you have learned to look at other data sets M: drive, including data for the Kolkata (Calcutta) - M:\City\Kolkata.

ArcCatalog is simply a data management and documentation program within ArcGIS. You’ll use it for copying, pasting, and deleting data sets and for reading metadata.

The bulk of your work in GIS will take place within the ArcMap module, with which you display, map, and analyze GIS data. The rest of this tutorial focuses on the use of ArcMap.

4 - Opening ArcMap and adding data layers

  1. To start ArcMap, choose Start– Programs – Applications – GIS Applications – ArcMap (note: in the GIS Center Lab in Tisch, choose Start – All Programs – GIS Applications – ArcGIS 9.3 – ArcMap.On home computers, look under All Programs – ArcGIS 9.3.1 – ArcMap).
  2. When the first dialog box comes up, make sure that you have selected to start with a new empty map and press OK.
  3. If the Add Data dialog box comes up, press Cancel for now.
  4. Choose View – Toolbars, and make sure that Main Menu, Standard, and Tools are visible. Uncheck all the other toolbars for now.
  5. On the left side of the screen, you should see your Table of Contents area - right now it should only say "Layers". If you do not see this separate area, choose Window - Table of Contents.

This is the Standard Toolbar:

  1. Click on the "plus" sign () to add data (alternatively, choose File —Add Data).
  2. You’ll need to add the M: drive data folder in ArcMap just as you did in ArcCatalog (in the GIS lab, the M: drive is already connected). Click on the Connect to Folder icon
  3. Choose the folder - datasets \\quarry\gis (M:) and click OK
  4. In the Add Data dialog box, navigate to M:\World\ESRIDataMaps93\Vector.
  5. Add data layers that are highlighted below (you can hold down the CTRL key and click on each layer in turn to select multiple layers, then press Add):
  6. All the data layers added will appear in your map. Click somewhere in the white area of the table of contents to un-highlight all the layers:
  7. Uncheck lakes and drainage in the Table of Contents
  8. Now you should have just the rivers, cities, and countries (cntry08) drawn on the map (checkmark them if need be).
  9. Zoom into a part of Africa using the Zoom In () tool. When using the zoom tool, you can click and drag a box around the area you would like to zoom in to. Use the Zoom In, Zoom Out, and Pan () tools to move around the map, and the Zoom to Full Extent () to go back to the full view. (In ArcGIS, you can place the cursor over each tool in the menu without clicking to see a description of what it does):
  10. Try clicking on the Identify icon () and then click on countries, rivers, or lakes. The Identify tool brings up information from the attribute table for each feature you click on.
  11. Can you find Gulu, Uganda? (Hint: Choose Edit – Find, click on the features tab, and type in Gulu, thenclickFind. Right-click on one of the results, and choose Pan to Feature or Flash Feature.)
  12. Right-click on the rivers layer in the Table of Contents (be sure you right-click on the actual name and not the symbol) and then click on Label Features as you see here – this will label the rivers.
  13. Turn on the lakes layer. If you don’t see the lakes, they may be under another layer. You can make them draw on top by left-clicking on the lakes layer, holding down the left mouse button, and dragging it up above other layers. This is how you move layers around on a map. *Note: if you still cannot see the lakes because they are the same color, leave it; you will learn how to change layer colors in the next section and should change the lake color then. Turn the lakes layer off again for now.
  14. When you are done looking around, click on the full extent icon () in the Tools menu.
  15. Now choose File – Save. In the Mugar Lab, save to yourP: drive- if you have not already, create a folder called ArcGIS Basics to hold your file. (In the GIS Center Lab in Tisch, save to your H: drive.) Name the map file basemap1.mxd. This action creates a map file (.mxd). A map file is a very small file that contains pointers to your data sets and remembers what you had up in your session. If you quit ArcMap at this point, the next time you start it, you can choose to start with this existing map file and it will automatically pop up all the data layers you added in your first session, with the layers turned on when you last saved the map file, and with the view of the data just as you left it. Thus, map files are easy ways to save work. But beware – map files do not actually contain data layers, they only have pointers to the data layers. If you copied your basemap1.mxd file and tried to open it on a home computer without the appropriate GIS data layers, the ArcMap session would start but nothing would appear. ArcMap would list the layers in the table of contents but be unable to display them because the program would not be able to find the data that the layers are pointing to, which are on the M: drive.
  16. Save your map file frequently and always save at the end of a session.
    In the next section, you will learn how to color the data layers to start making a more interesting and readable map.

5 - Defining the general and symbology properties for a layer

  1. Now add all of the layers from the IndiaBaseMap folder which is in M:\Country\India\IndiaBaseMapfolder - you’ll have to back up the navigation path to get to there.
  2. Again, the map will be messy. Zoom into India so that it fills the map.
  3. You can group the India data layers all together. If they are no longer all highlighted, hold the CTRL key and click on each one in turn to highlight them. (Remember to click on the layer name, not the symbol.) Assuming they are highlighted now, right-click on one of them and chooseGroup as shown below:
  4. Rename the “New Group Layer” to India as shown below:
  5. Perform the same grouping on the World data so that it is in its own group as shown here, then turn off the World data:

6 – Setting a Coordinate System for the Data Frame

The rest of this tutorial focuses on India, so we are going to set a coordinate system that better maps India. This will also ensure that any spatial queries you do will perform correctly.

  1. Click on the View menu and choose Data Frame Properties
  2. Click on the Coordinate System tab
  3. Under Select a Coordinate System, click on Predefined then on Projected Coordinate Systems
  4. Scroll down and click on UTM then on WGS 1984, and finally on WGS 1984 UTM Zone 44N as shown below:
  5. Click OK.

Zoom out to the world (with the World data showing) at this point, you will see that this severely distorts the rest of the world. But it’s a great way to show India!