Lab4

In this lab, the basic elements of ArcMap are introduced by ArcMap tutorial. Before going throguh the tutorial. I tried to find a legal download version, which is the ArcGIS 10 trial version(This version is free for two months), but since the ArcGIS10 requires 64-bit CPU and 64-bit operation system, and my computer has not been upgraded yet, so I used ArcGIS9.3 for this lab. The tutorial starts from exploring the data with the tools in the tool bar, then the tutorial teach us how to edit geographic features,to work with tables, and to work with map elements. Since I have some computer science background, and I follow the instruction in the lab, for example: save in a relative path file name, how to export the map as .jpg format and so on, I can get though the tuturial fluently and make the map.

After using the ArcGIS, I find out that this software is very powerful. In each frame, there are lots of layers, and features, and these layers and features are store as a single file; each of the layer or feature can represent different spatial data or attributes, and ArcMap can marge them together. Moreover, AcrMap can do a lot of editing about these frames and layers such as, copying and pasting one layer in a frame to another frame, changing the color of the layer and features, doing calculations of the attributes in the table, plotting graph, doing geostatistics analysis, and so on. Also, this software is kind of user-friendly, it provide a lot of explainlations in every windows, and the tutorial is clear and detailed. Futhermore, the ArcGIS has a great diversity. I looked up the ESRI offical website. For ArcGIS10, there are more then 1GB of tuturial; this means the tutorial PDF file(3.6MB) that we go through, contains a very little portion of function of the whole software. What we did is based on some exsisting maps and edit them. From these, we can see ArcGIS is extremely powerful.

The pitfalls and potiential become more obvious after experiencing the workout of GIS software.The first problem arise is the software. In this lab, if the school is not going to provide us the software, we need to buy the software ourselves and the software is not cheap; and this is the first barrier which stops new learner to learn how to use GIS. Also, a lot of softwares have high hardware or software requirement, like the problem that I encounter using ArcGIS 10. This may implies a basic computer knowledge is required for using GIS too. Besides the software issue, learning how to use GIS is time consuming. In this lab, we just edit the templates, but not create our own work, and this still use a lot of time. The time reuqired to train a professional GIS software user is long, so a lot of people would rather using Neogeography rather than using GIS. Also, the format of out put of GIS software is mainly paper, and GIS contain a huge amount of metadata that paper is not enough for displaying all the information which store in the database. Like in this lab, we are difficult to display all the data sets in one page.

On the other hand, GIS also have a lot of potential. First of all, it is professional. When I edit the map using ArcMap, the software will mentain the accuracy. For exmaple when we import a layer into a frame, the features in the layer will fall in exactly the position and size that correspond with the real world. Secondly, everything in the map is changable. Unlike Neogeography, user can only edit some of the elements in the map; user can edit the entire map, so GIS is a better platform for user to create their own map. Thirdly, GIS can do complex calculation of attributes, and express these attributes in several ways. This is all I discover in my first ArcMap experience. I believe as I go over the course, I will discover more and more potential and adventages of GIS.