Creating Thematic Maps Now that you have “built” your campus and entered in attributes for them, it might be interesting to separate the features based on a characteristic, such as function. This way, we could easily determine which buildings are academic, which buildings are for maintenance, and which are athletic. This type of map is known as a thematic map, and this section will guide you through the process of creating thematic maps.

A thematic map shows selected information relating to one or more specific themes. Examples of classifications that could be used in a thematic map are temperature, land use, population density and rainfall maps. You have seen thematic maps used on television weather reports. When you see the map showing blue places as cold and green as warmer, you are looking at a thematic map.

1. To create a thematic map of buildings in ArcGIS 9, double-click on the “building” layer in the legend, bringing up the layer properties. Click on the Symbology tab and then the word “Categories,” in the column to the left.

Click Unique values, then click “FUNCTION” under the values field.

3. Select a color scheme then “un-check,” the box next to all other values, and click “Add All Values”. Click OK.

Don’t forget to save 4. Turning off the other features, you can note that the building theme shows the different categories of buildings. You may try different classification schemes for the themes in the legend if you like. However, for the map in this project, you will want to use the function category.

You have now completed digitizing data and manipulating it to create your school map. In chapter 6 you will perform some basic analysis. You will be determining the approximate amounts of land on your campus dedicated to different functions such as athletic, academic, maintenance, and other purposes.