June 2007 - Posts

Making Maps that Show Flow from Place to Place

We’ve received a few requests this week asking how to use ArcMap to show flow from place to place. The requests ranged from, “What might the data look like?” to “How do I make the flow arrows?” One thing to note, this isn’t a topic that I have much first-hand Read More...
Posted Friday, June 29, 2007 11:01 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 3 Comments
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Heads up Color Proofing for ESRI Style's Colors

Here's a useful little map document called ColorPalette_ArcGIS.mxd that I put together to anticipate the variation between colors on my monitor and the printers and plotters in the office. It contains no geographic data, only graphics that correspond Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 28, 2007 10:59 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 1 Comments
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Finding Depression Contour Lines

Unfortunately there currently is no automated way in ArcGIS to evaluate contour lines and select those that are depression contour lines. There are some tools in the Spatial Analyst extension such as FLOW DIRECTION, SINK and FILL which may look useful Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 21, 2007 10:55 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 0 Comments

Gradient Fills Add Cartographic Allure

ESRI’s Graphics team needed some maps for a slide for one of this year’s Users Conference presentations to show where GIS was being used in K-12 programs in the U.S. and throughout the world. I was asked to spruce up the maps for the slide and was told Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 13, 2007 10:47 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 1 Comments

Setting the Z Factor Parameter Correctly

We set the Z-Factor parameter based on our latitude. The Z-Factor parameter is in many Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst tools, Hillshade and Slope are the two that I use most. Not setting the Z-Factor correctly makes the hillshades look heavy or leaden. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 12, 2007 10:29 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 3 Comments
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Does every map need a north arrow and scale bar?

I had an interesting email conversation this morning with one of my mentors, and the subject revolved around whether all maps need a scale bar and north arrow. He was trained in the “old school” of cartography, as he admits. His cartography teacher once Read More...
Posted Friday, June 08, 2007 10:20 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 1 Comments
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What is a Base Map? What Kind of Base Map Do You Need?

What role do you expect a base map to play in your GIS? Some say, “The base map is the part of the map I don’t have to make.” To that, I say, who should make it, who will use it, and what will they do with it? Today a wide variety and diversity of base Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 07, 2007 10:15 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 1 Comments
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Why Cartographic Data Modeling?

One of the things we end up explaining on a fairly frequent basis is why we've been spending time working on data modeling, the base map data model , cartographic data modeling, or adding cartography to the ArcGIS data models . This is as good a time Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 06, 2007 9:53 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 0 Comments
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Cartographic Relief Presentation is now available from ESRI Press

Eduard Imhof’s Cartographic Relief Presentation is now available from ESRI Press . Many of us have been anxiously waiting for this book to be re-released for quite some time as Cartographic Relief Presentation is a very hard book to find – you can only Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 05, 2007 9:48 AM by MappingCenterTeam | 1 Comments
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