Lab 4

 

My experiences with arcmap have been mixed thus far. It took my a while to complete this lab, as it was the first time that I have used arcmap. I thought that on the whole the software was realtivly easy to use and comprehend after working with it for about an hour.

I had a big problem with joining the two data sets together and that took me about an hour to fix after consulting help with my TA. I am still not exaclty sure why my two tables did not join properly when I preformed the join. I would say that arcmap did not have a very helpful 'help' page as it was unable to answer many issues that I had when constucting this map.

On the other hand I thought that the visuals where excellent and it was realtively easy to understand the different layers and therefore add and remove them according. Having seen the old arcmap, as the tutorial was in the old arcmap I can see that the improvments are signifacnt and the new arcmap appears to be considerably more user friendly.

Overall I would say that it took my much longer than I thought to get used to arcmap, however I would not blame arcmap for that and therefore would not consider it a pitfall, as the software has to be realtively complicated as it creates complicated maps. I would also say that it is easy to understand once you get the hang of it, and therefore I think that the next assigment will take me considerably less time. The visuals and location of the tool bars etc I find very useful and rarely found it difficult to find a tool.