Foundations Of Geographic Information Systems Assignment Package

1. Creating Spatial Features

We will create spatial feature that show the fastest route from Snell Library to Matthews Arena – the home stadium of the Northeastern University basketball team.

Open a fresh ArcGIS canvas.

Add a base-map of satellite imagery.

Let’s zoom in to the Northeastern University campus in Boston.

The primary step in creating a point/line/polygon is to first create a shapefile. Open the create feature class window. You can do this by using the search bar.

Save the shapefile to a known location.

Name the class whatever you want.

Choose the correct geometry and click ok.

Click this button to get the editor tool bar.

Once this step is completed you will have to begin editing the newly created layer.

Create a point feature over the building footprint of the Snell Library – this can be approximately centered in the building footprint, or approximately over one of the entrances to the building. Both approaches are acceptable for this simple exercise.

You will need to create three shapefiles since they are all different geometries. (Point vs line vs polygon)

Create a polygonal feature around the building footprint of Matthews Arena. Note: in some applications and fields, the processing of creating polygon features for buildings or areas is termed: geofencing.

You will click for each vertices and right click to bring up the option to Finish sketch.

Let’s also create a linear feature that connects our library to the arena. This image may be a helpful reference:

2. Introducing Cartographic Design

Get re-acquainted with the overview of feature symbology in our ArcGIS Pro video guide. Exercise some creative freedom here in changing the color or style of the features you just created.

Do NOT turn in an image with ESRI default stylings. Though this task is simple, it is designed for you to play around with the many, many options you have in visualizing different features.

(MY EXAMPLE, you can copy style)

Save a zoomed image of your newly created features to a .pdf or .jpeg file and upload to Blackboard for review.