Loose Ends Lab

Loose Ends Lab

Process Summary

By: David Jenness

Part 1:

Task 1:  Examine the different areas of the Order, Source, Visibility, and Selection.  Important to note which ones let you change the order and see non-spatial data such as tables.   Answered Question 1 and 2.

Task 2:  Create layer groupings (which really come in handy during tasks at my job).

Task 3: Look at graphing, which was something I haven’t done much with personally, so it is good to see how to view this data.  Answered Question 3.

Task 4: Understand purpose of Raster Pyramids (Which I use for several things at work in relation to our Imagery)

Task 5: Work with map templates.   This was very useful to view as it can really save a lot of time when creating new maps.   At work sometimes I know we have to repair the “normal.mxt” file.   Answered question 4.

Task 6:  Using the Dynamic text features (especially in conjunction with the map templates) should really help save me some time in future assignments.   Answered Question 5.

Part 2:

Task 1: Really found the breakdown of the various Geodatabase types helpful.  In particular, the difference between the “File” and “Personal” database description helped me answer a question of a coworker.   Answered Question 1.

Task2: As a database guy, it was really helpful to see the difference between the ObjectID, FID, and OID which I have seen all of during various projects.   Also got to get the clarification to not use them in joins.  Answered Question 2.

Task 3: Attribute field types are pretty familiar to me, but great to get the clarification on how ArcGIS does it.  Answered Question 3.

Task 4: Feature types (vs. Feature Dataset) is an important aspect of ArcGIS I always seem a little fuzzy on.   This section helped clarify that someone.   Answered Question 4.

Task 5: Map delivery is another topic that comes up at work pretty regularly, so it was good to see it addressed in this lab.

Task 6 :  Glad to see that ESRI really understands the concept of “portability” of their creations within ArcMap.    Answered Question 5.

Task 7: Path Names and Data sources come up at work whenever we do a server improvement (like a few weeks ago to our SDE server moving from Oracle to Microsoft SQL).   Great that they covered how to repair the data source.   Answered Question 6.

Task 8: Data Driven test pages seem like a great concept for further getting the information in the hands of the people that need it.   Answered Question 7.

Task 9:   The Map Page Size is a VERY important concept especially when working with the various plotters we have available at my office.

Task 10: Geocoding can be a real great way to augment a project to really provide useful information to the end users.