GIS 1 Lab # 1.
The purpose of this first lab was to understand common projections. We also learned how to define projections for features that did not have one set, and how to make very simple maps of our finished projections.
We began by making 5 different projections on the same two shapefiles, one was all the world's countries, and the other was a geographical grid.
Loximuthal
Geographic
Mercator
Sinusoidal
Equidistant Conic
Next, we projected a shapefile of the United States onto a data frame with a different projection. We learned about "on-the-fly" projection as we also added a Massachusetts roads shapefile. We defined the projection for both of these, setting them to NAD83 Mercator Azimuth. Once we finished that, they lined up much more smoothly.
We also projected the UTM 16N onto Wisconsin, creating a very accurate map of the state's outline.
We next added all of the maps together on one page, so they could easily be compared to one another.
I used Adobe Illustrator for this, I like the range of creativity and easiness of the program compared to trying to compose an image in ArcMap. I added a simple compass to a few of the maps where I thought it was appropriate.
Lastly, we combined everything we learned in the lab to create a final map of Eau Claire county in Wisconsin and its surrounding counties. The counties shapefile came without any projection. I gave it NAD 83 and then projected it, along with a local Rivers shapefile, onto a Wisconsin Transverse Mercator State plane. The final result looked good, So I added a few more details to make it an official map.
Again I used Illustrator. I really like that you can export a map directly from ArcMap as an Illustrator file. I'm looking forward to learning how to use other features and make even better maps between the two programs.
sup dude?!
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