ArcGIS contains a set of applications to solve real-world geographic problems through a sequence of spatial operations. ArcMap is the central application that allows you to perform the usual tasks and advanced analysis, as well as show the results by means of attractive printed or digital maps.
The structure of the main ArcMap window (Figure 1) provides a Menu Bar, below which are the toolbars that can be customized from the “Customize” menu. On the left-hand side is the Table of Contents, where all the participating layers are located. Panels: Results, ArcToolbox, Catalog, Search, etc. can be found vertically on the right and can be activated independently. To explore the geographic information, it is possible to use Data View, and Layout View can be used to design the map before its publication.
The Tools toolbar contains the most commonly used functions in ArcMap. The main functions of each tool are described in Figure 2.
- The Zoom In/Zoom Out tools allow you to zoom in or out within the Data View. You can draw a box on the map to see a specific area in greater or less detail.
- The Pan tool is used to move the map freely up, down, left or right without changing the extension and without suffering a change in the working scale. This action is called panning.
- Full Extent allows you to see the total extent of all the participating layers of the active map.
- Fixed Zoom In/Fixed Zoom Out tools have the ability to prevent zooming in or out too much and so lose sight of the map, because with each click, you can zoom in or out only by a fixed amount.
- Previous Extent/Next Extent are used to return to a previous zoom-in or zoom-out view. It permits you to “undo” the navigation screen, which is very useful when the map view has been lost by mistake.
- Select Features/Clear Selected Features. The first tool allows entities to be selected within a rectangle, polygon, loop, circle or line. Once selected, the entities are highlighted in blue. The second tool (Clear Selected Features) removes the selection.
- Select Elements lets you select, move, or re-size graphics or text on the map. This facility is also available on the Draw toolbar.
- The Identify tool identifies the geographic characteristics of an element by means of a click.
- Measure measures the distance and/or area of a sector within the workspace. This tool may appear inactive if, at the beginning of the work with ArcMap, we load a layer with no spatial reference system. The reason for this is that the program does not know the units of the layer. In this case it is necessary to indicate the coordinate system. Assuming that the spatial reference system of the layer is WGS84 17S (we will see later what this means), then the map units are meters. Double click in the Data Frame (in Layers), go to the General tab, and click on Map and on Display in the Units section, and indicate Meters.
- Find allows you to search for an entity, place or address.
- Go To XY allows you to locate a point by means of a coordinate in XY format.
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