Introduction to Geographic Information Systems in Forest Resources

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There are 5 basic ArcView document types. Each document contains a different methods of dealing with your GIS data. Those types are

Views
Tables
Layouts
Charts
Scripts
3D Scenes

and are displayed in a column on the left side of the ArcView Project window.

When you single click on one of the icons on the left of the project window, you will see a list of available documents of that type.

When you double click on one of the icons on the left, you will create a new instance of that type of document.

Documents can be deleted from the project by selecting them in the project window and pressing the <DELETE> key or by selecting Delete from the Project menu.

Views contain geographic features, such as points, lines, polygons, and raster themes. Views are the most frequently used document within ArcView. You alter the symbology of data within views. In addition, views are the foundation for map layouts.

View documents contain 2 parts:

• The Table of Contents is on the left, and contains a list of the current themes in the view, along with a legend describing the themes' symbology. A theme is a data set that represents a single feature class (e.g., roads, streams, forest stands). Each theme that is loaded will be listed in the Table of Contents.
  
  To the left of each theme's name is a check box. To control the drawing of themes, check the boxes on or off.
  
  Themes are drawn in order from bottom to top. The topmost theme will obscure any data which have already been drawn, so be careful of the order of the themes in the Table of Contents. The drawing order can be altered by dragging the theme up or down in the list.
  
  Active themes appear raised or "chiseled" in the Table of Contents. Certain operations act on the active themes. To toggle a theme's state of activity, single click on the theme's name in the Table of Contents.
  
  You control drawing order by dragging the themes in the legend up and down. Drawing always occurs from the bottom of the list to the top of the list. Any theme that is at the top of the list in the Table of Contents will obscure those themes that are lower in the list.
  
  To change the symbology of the theme, double click on the theme's name.
  
  
• The Map Display is on the right hand side of the view document window, and contains a planimetric view of the geographic map data within the view. This view document has 2 themes: Road and Bound. Both themes are turned on, and the Road theme is active.
  
  
  
  
• The View GUI, at the top of the application window, contains buttons and tools used to perform operations on themes and views. Only those menus, buttons, and tools that are applicable to Views will be available in the View GUI.

Tables display attribute information or other tabular data.

Tables are composed of

• Fields (columns), and
• Records (rows)

Tables can represent theme attributes, in which case there will be a one-to-one relationship between a spatial object and a record in the theme's attribute table.

Fields represent single classes of characteristics of all members of the theme or table. For example, the field at the far right of the table above represents the road name for each road segment in the Road theme.

Records contain descriptive data about individual features. The descriptive data can contain anything that the data developer chose to include in the data source. The descriptive data can be altered, updated, or deleted.

Tables can also contain data which are either related to spatial data, or they can be any type of tabular data, whether or not the data are capable of being used in a spatially explicit manner. For example, you may have a table that represents attributes of animal sighting points (a theme table), and another table that is used to provide a lookup of common names for the animals in your theme.

Layouts are used for map preparation. They contain geographic data and cartographic features such as legends, scale bars, neatlines, and north arrows. Layouts may also contain charts and tables.

Layouts can be sent to print output devices or captured as graphics files,

Layout designs can also be saved as templates for recreating a series of several maps, each with a common layout format.

Charts contain graphical displays of tabular data in a form that is easy to comprehend. Any tables in ArcView can be displayed as charts (as long as there are not too many rows in the table). Because of ArcView's limitation on the number of records that can be displayed in a chart; if there are too many records of data a chart cannot be made. Instead, you can perform a summary, as I did for this chart displaying cumulative lengths of roads according to road type:

Avenue is the programming language for ArcView. It is an object-oriented language. Scripts are text files containing Avenue code. This example is the first part of an Avenue script that fills internal sinks in an elevation grid theme.

For more information about the Avenue programming language, see ArcView help or our exercise on Introduction to Avenue.

3d Scenes

3D scenes are additional document types that are available only when the 3D Analyst Extension is enabled. 3D scenes are for viewing data in 3D perspective.

We will cover the use of 3D scenes in our module on 3-D and Surface Modeling.

Syllabus Schedule Class Meetings Assignments Course Data Internet Search Current Grades Contact Us CFR 590 Internet-only section Lab Locations

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