Wednesday 7 November 2012

Monday 5 November 2012

Lab times final week

Hi

The lab with ArcMap 10 is available this week on Tuesday 6 and Friday 9 November. It is closed for exams  on Wednesday 7 and Thursday 8 November.

Given these restrictions we will still accept your final submission on Monday 12 November.

I will be available for help on Tuesday and Friday this week.

Cheers
Martin

Thursday 25 October 2012

Submitting your cartogram project

Hi

If you have your four cartograms ready you can work on the power point presentation of your project. The details are in the document below which describes how to prepare each slide of your presentation and how to submit your project.

Please read the instruction carefully!!!!!
1. Don' t forget to add your student number everywhere that is indicated.
2. You will be submitting five png image files named with your student number - see document below.which explains how to do this.

FINAL DATE FOR SUBMISSION  9 November 2012

Downloads
Preparing and submitting your cartogram project presentation

Martin

Thursday 18 October 2012

Making your four cartograms and saving them to an image

Hi

Today you will make the four cartograms one for each question you asked and save them to jpeg images which can be included into your Power Point presentation.

Downloads
Save a map (cartogram) to an image (e.g. jpeg)

Have fun
Martin

Thursday 11 October 2012

Making cartograms from your data

Hi

This week we are going to finally make the cartograms using your worldmapper_all layer which is your to your reorganized excel spreadsheet. In the tutorial it explains that we first have to save the join into a new shape file and how to do this.

After this is done you can continue making the cartograms. Please refer to the last blog post for the method used to make the cartograms.

Download
Exporting the joined worldmapper_alllayer to a new combined shape file

Martin

Thursday 4 October 2012

Installing the Cartogram tool for ArcGIS

Hi

Some of you may be ready to make cartograms from your worldmap_all layer.

BUT before you can start with this step you must have done the following 

  1. Reorganised your spreadsheets so that all your data in available in one spreadsheet
  2. Removed any repeated columns from your spreadsheet
  3. Changed the column heading to 8 characters without spaces, brackets etc (remember to make a note of what your new headings mean!)
  4. Join your spreadsheet to your worldmapper_all layer
  5. Added a column or columns classifying the countries of the world into categories  (These will depend on  the question which you asked)
If you have completed all this you can start making the cartograms.

REMEMBER TO SAVE ALL THE YOUR WORK IN A SINGLE FOLDER AND EMAIL IT TO YOUR SELF!

Adding and using the ArcGIS Cartogram tool

We are going to try to do this today but the permissions on the lab computer may prevent us from getting this far. In which case we have have the script installed on the machine by next week and I will give you another task in the class.

In order to make the cartograms we have to add a special script to ArcGIS.  This script come with full instructions and its own data follow the steps below!

  1. Download the cartogram tool script readme file (below) and read it carefully before doing anything else!  I know I don't I just click and get frustrated!!!!
  2. Install the script to a folder which you create on the desktop e.g. desktop/ArcScripts.
  3. Don't get confused you are here to learn!
  4. The script installs its own demonstration .mxd file with its own layers and the tool already added to the toolbox. This is available in the cartogram .mxd file which is in the directory where you installed the script e.g. desktop/ArcScripts. You can use this demo to practice making a cartogram by following the steps in the readme file.
  5. Once you have practiced making a cartogram using the demo data in the cartogram.mxd you can try with the worldmap_all layer using the data you joined to it from your spreadsheet in your .mxd file. 
  6. If you read the instructions carefully - you will note the following when making a cartogrm using your data!

  • You must add the tool to the toolbox - follow the steps in the readme file.
  • Make sure there are no negative values in the value field you are using - this will be one of the columns you added with the join. You can do this by adding the definition query - all explained in the readme.
  • DON'T PANIC!
  • Check the box "Copy the Original Polygon Features table to the Output Cartogram Features table" or your cartogram will loose much of its attribute data such as country name which is no good.
Downloads


Remember not to panic and have fun!

Martin

Thursday 20 September 2012

Organising your GIS data

Today you are going to:
  1. Find data to divided your countries in the categories you have used in your research questions. 
  2. Neaten up your spreadsheet
  3. Join your spreadsheet to the world mapper layer in ArcGIS 10 
  4. Learn about labels and symbology on you map
Downloads


Have fun and enjoy