Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS: A Workbook Approach to Learning GIS, 3rd Edition

Adding Other Map Elements

The layout has no north arrow. Let’s put one in. We’ll erase the Coordinate System information and put the north arrow there.

____ 19. With the Select Elements tool, click the Coordinate System text so that it gets a selected border. Tap Delete on the keyboard.

____ 20. Hmmm . . . on second thought maybe erasing that information isn’t such a good idea. An “undo” command is in the Edit menu, but let’s try the universal undo: Ctrl-Z. Bingo! (You will put that in your Fast Fact File, won’t you?)

____ 21. If you are running version 10.0 you will see an ESRI logo. Delete that to make room for a north arrow.

____ 22. Click North Arrow on the Insert menu. Pick ESRI North 6 and click OK. It appears, selected, with handles, on the Layout. If you place the cursor over one of the handles, the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow. If you drag the handle with this cursor, you can resize the selected element. Resize the arrow that appears and drag it into the legend/scale area. Press the Esc key, (or click somewhere away from the arrow on a blank area) to unselect the element and, thus, turn off the handles. Then, move the elements around to make things look neat. Examine the result. See Figure 3-5.

FIGURE 3-5

Well, that’s annoying. Upon inspection it appears that the North Arrow doesn’t seem to be pointing quite north. We went to some trouble to line Colorado ...