ArcMap Tutorial

I did not think this was going to be a difficult lab because I was just following very specific instructions, but I ran into a lot of trouble. I ended up doing a few parts about 5 times, and had to completely start over about half way through. I completed exercise 1 during lab section and saved the data on my flash drive thinking that it would be simple to use remote access to finish it at home, but it turned out not to be that simple. I did not originally use the data from the correct location (I thought I had, but I thought wrong). The source of my data came from the S: drive, obviously creating issues. I did also have issues figuring out how to properly navigate between Remote Access and my flash drive, I still don't know exactly where to save everything.

Retrieving the data from the correct location so that I could make and save corrections was the hardest part for me. By the second time around I was VERY careful about where every piece of data came from. I also did not save my work as often as I should have. I did periodically save my work, but there were times (particularly when I was doing the Field Calculation and messed that up) where I had to start over a certain part but did not save my previous work, making me start over even further back. It was very frustrating, and now it is Thursday night before my Friday morning lab and I just now have it all figured out and ready to go.

I have used GIS maps in previous classes, but not very thoroughly. I had no idea how interactive you can be with the layers and how much information you can show through graphs and shortcuts and street names, etc. It's easy to make a lot of mistakes with ArcMap, but the information provides a plethora of services to the user. The ability to turn some layers on and some off, to change the color, or to add legends and scales allow these maps to serve multipurposes.

However, as I said easier it is very easy to make mistakes. Something as easy to overlook as having one layer placed above another on the table of contents may change the view-ability of the map and obscure it's purpose. Although these maps are not made by amateurs, that does not make them perfect. Layers can be made with faulty data make them unusable and calculations may be performed wrong. Because so much is done by the computer, mistakes may not be as easy to catch (especially in the case of calculations).