Quick Introduction to ArcCatalog
1. ArcCatalog is the program that ESRI designed to help manage map/data files. Open ArcCatalog by selecting from Program folder. Note the same basic architecture as ArcMap toolbars and menus, Table of Contents and active screen.
2. You can add or remove items from the Table of Contents through File ‘ Connect Folder and File Disconnect Folder. Take out your data disk from your ‘Getting to know ArcGIS’ book and then connect to the F:GTKArcGISChapter06.
3. Once you have connected to Chapter06, click on one of the *.mxd files (e.g. the file that you create when you save in ArcMap). If you click on the Contents tab you should see a thumbnail of the file; if you click on Preview you will see a full size version of file; but Metadata won’t give you anything because no Metadata has been created for this file. Now open (+ sign next to folder icon) the Data folder in Chapter06 and click on the rivers.shp file. Try the Contents, Preview, and Metadata tabs.
4. Metadata is a way of keeping track of your map data. This means its source, its quality, its spatial reference information, etc. The information in metadata files is not actively used by ArcMap but is for you and others who may use your data. You can navigate through the metadata by clicking on column headings/subheadings. Note that you can also add Metadata but won’t be able to do so in this example because the file we are accessing is on locked CD. Try navigating to one the files in the CILAGIS folder that you downloaded to HD and edit Metadata . Tool for editing are in tool bar.
5. Finally, be sure that ArcMap is open and a blank map document is available and that ArcMap and ArcCatalog are sized such they can both be seen. Now click on the rivers file in ArcCatalog and drag it onto ArcMap workspace.
Two things to highlight! Arc8 is an improvement over previous version of software but is still sensitive to files being moved around so do not change directory/folder structure unless you are prepared to do much work searching for files! Also, Many map layers (shape files for example) are actually composed of 3-4 files. If you copy/move a map layer then you need to move all the files.
6. Finally, there are any number of sites now that provide either free on-line mapping and/or maps/data for use by GIS programs like ARC8. Find the Internet Servers folder in the ArcCatalog Table of Contents and double click on Add Internet Servers. Enter the following in the URL for a new server. http://www.geographynetwork.com/ to connect to one of the main servers. I do not usually use these since they seem really slow out of ArcCatalog.
7. Let’s download some of the US 2000 census data.
a. Using Explorer WWW browser, go to http://www.esri.com/data/download/census2000_tigerline/index.html
b. As prompted, select Minnesota then Rice County and then Census Blocks 2000. Click on the Proceed with Download and the Download to a folder/directory on you HD.
c. Repeat steps a and b but this time for the ‘Census Block Demographics (SF1)’ file.
c. Each of the files you downloaded is a zip file, working with each separately, double click on file (WinZip should be program that opens on your machine. There are other unzip programs and if one of these opens the following instructions will likely not apply) and then double click again on the tgr*.zip file that is contained within and then (without highlighting any of the three files you now see) hit the EXTRACT button and save to an aptly named folder.
d. As time permits, view these files in ArcCatalog and add Metadata. Then open the tgr27131blk00 file in ArcMap. Note that it is distorted in appearance. Why?? You can use ArcMap to change the coordinate system to NAD83 UTM Zone 15N to get a more ‘normal appearance. Finally, “join” the map of census blocks to the demographic data contained in the tgr27000sf1blk.dbf file and create a new map displaying the population of each census block.
i. To join files, right click on name of map layer in Table of Contents
ii. Chose Joins and Relates/ Joins and
iii. Use STFID for field to join upon and tgr27000sf1blk as the table to join to and STFID as the field in the table for the join and click OK.
8. Finally, much of the map data you may download (for example from the DNR ‘Data Deli’) is in a specialized interchange format. Files in this format have a *.e00 tag on them. If you need to work with one of these, you will need to use a conversion routine which is in the ArcTools program. One of these e00 files is in the 24kStreams folder.
a. Open ArcTools program.
b. Select Conversion Tools /Import to Coverage /Arcview Import from Interchange File.
c. Browse/navigate to 24kStreams folder and chose the dnr*.e00 file for input and then select a new file name for output and then hit OK.