Some Concepts That Underpin GIS - Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS - page 63

50. After navigating to the Fire_Hydrants feature class, in the Catalog Tree (you know the drill by
now), position the cursor over the it, press and hold down the left mouse button, move the
cursor to the ArcMap button on the task bar, wait until the ArcMap window has replaced the
ArcCatalog one, move the cursor to the left pane (labeled Layers) of the ArcMap window, and
drop (by releasing the mouse button) the Fire_Hydrants feature class. Bingo!
51. For the last time in this project, remove the Fire_Hydrants data from ArcMap. Close ArcCatalog,
leaving ArcMap open.
52. Method 4: This is probably the best way if you don't need to use the full ArcCatalog program
or your screen is crowded. Open the Catalog window within ArcMap by clicking the Catalog
window icon on the standard toolbar. The button looks like ArcCatalog's icon with a window
behind it. The Catalog window will pop out and display the familiar Catalog Tree portion of
ArcCatalog. Expand, by clicking the + sign next to each item and thereby changing it to a - sign,
the following: Folder Connections; your connection to your ___ IGIS-Arc_ YourInitials folder; the
Village_Data folder; Water_Resources.gdb; and Hydrants (Feature Dataset). You should now
see the Fire_Hydrants Feature Class. Drag the Fire_Hydrants Feature Class into either the blank
map display area or the left pane labeled Layers.
53. Close ArcMap without saving changes.
Exercise 1-6 (Project)
A Look at Some Spatial Data for Finding a Site for the
Wildcat Boat Facility
You usually don't get the luxury of working on one GIS project from beginning to end. Life in the GIS world
frequently isn't like that. In this textbook we'll be working on one rather large project (the search for sites
for the Wildcat Boat facility that you did manually in Exercise 1-1), but along the way, we'll do several other
projects.
This is the beginning of the GIS part of the Wildcat Boat project. Using ArcCatalog, you will find data for
the site. Then, using the techniques you learned in Projects 1-4 and 1-5, you will use ArcCatalog to explore
data sets associated with this project.
Most of the Wildcat Boat data is contained in a Personal Geodatabase. 24 Both personal and file
Geodatabases have a number of advantages over the older data structures you will encounter: the
coverage data structure and the shapefile data structure. If you have been in the GIS profession for a
while, most of the data you saw was probably in the coverage or shapefile format. Now, the move to file
24 The Personal Geodatabase is quite similar to the File Geodatabase that you met with the Village Data. The differences
that affect the user are in the details of how searches are done, how large the data sets can be, and some others. Details
of the differences can be found by pointing your browser at www.esri.com and typing “file personal” (without quotes)
into the Search box. Also the HELP files, to be discussed later, contain a detailed list of differences. For now, don't concern
yourself with the differences, except to know that the File Geodatabase is the most current standard.