GIS Cartography

Creating Maps with ArcGIS

First Map in ArcMap illustrating the boundaries of the Mexican State

 The ArcMap project/MXD activity 2 was created and saved.  Under Map documents properties menu the file menu was selected, and the name was change to Mexico, a title and the author’s name was also entered. The add button was then click and the following were selected:  World_countries, Mex_boundary, Americas_admin.  To illustrate the boundaries the following approach was used: selecting by attribute and a new selection was created.  Then a new layer was created (by export). After doing so, some labels were applied to the world_countries by choosing new fills colors and symbols to the CNTRY_NAME. After finishing adding values and symbols, the map was flip to layout view and a layout and legend were selected, an arrow, scale bar and scale text were added, as well as a dynamic text.  Lastly, the frame tab was selected some features were selected for the tab and finally it was exported to JPG and saved as activity 2_map1.mxd. 

Second Map illustrating many layers of Mexico

The layers Mex_rails, Mex_Rivers, Mex_Roads, Mex_urban were selected and Mex_state was unchecked. Under mex_rivers, the symbol tab was selected and under categories and unique values the RANK field value was selected and values such as primary and major were added.  The same procedure was used to display only roads and rails.  In this map, advanced labelling was chose for Mex_urban, with a scale of 1:5,000,000. The labels were then converted to annotations to allow you to manipulate them individually just like a text box. Before creating annotations your map needs to be in data view. Labels and symbols were added, as well as a legend, scale bar and scale text.  Finally, an inset map was created and a data frame was inserted highlighting Central America region, the map was exported to JPG and saved as Activity2_map2.

Third map created using Raster to illustrate the elevations of Mexico

First, everything was removed from the previous map except world_countries from the “Layers” data frame. The Layer Mex_Elev raster was added and under its symbol properties stretched Symbology was selected, a color ramp was chose to display the information. A legend was inserted, as well as a scale bar and scale text an inset frame to display the area. Finally, the map was exported to JPG and saved as activity3_map3.