There
are both potentials and pitfalls in using the GIS software Arc Map. It is not
nearly as user-centric as using a program such as google maps and making your
own mash up map, which can cause problems for the inexperienced user. However,
there are a lot more available tools to use in Arc Map that allow maps to show
a wealth of details in a map, combined with a wealth of data that can be used
to analyze what the map is trying to portray.
I ran into several problems while creating my
maps concerning airport noise. It was very difficult for me to export features
that I selected, as I kept on getting an error message saying Arc Map will not
allow me to do this operation, but since it is not very user-centric, it did
not tell me why Arc Map was unhappy and how to make Arc Map happy. It turns out
that I needed to save it as a shape file, and not as a feature class, which was
the default option. Another problem I ran into was trying to summarize the land
use categories, as I kept on getting error messages. I still don’t know why Arc
Map was unhappy about that. It really seems like there is just a lot of trial
and error that the user has to do in order to get exactly what they want out of
a map using Arc Map. However, the tools available within Arc Map are very useful,
so the benefits with Arc Map far outweigh the shortfalls of it.
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