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CE547 - Tips from Kelly

From Kelly Isaacson (CE 547 assistant):

 Things that are important to me:

1. Legends, as appropriate.  This is number one on my list for a reason.

 Legend labels can be edited – Layer Properties > symbology.  There is a column heading “label” in which you can change the label name that will appear if you label on the map as well as in the legend.  This can be used to clean up excessive decimal places.

2. Units in legends or titles, as appropriate

3. Scale bars

4. Proper labels (including units) on graphs

Y axis and x axis labels can be edited once you are in the graph wizard (Attribute table > create graph) in Step 3 of 3 in Advanced Options.

If you have problems with these things, check your green book or shoot me an email, because they are usually quick questions to answer.

Keep in mind that you are creating a communication tool.  Try to communicate as effectively as possible.  Think about your symbol selection and what it is communicating.  For evaporation (a water loss), is using a water droplet an effective communication tool?  Or does it maybe suggest rainfall?  I am not going to take off points for this, I just want to bring the point up so that this program becomes a better tool in your hands.

Regarding the “description” or “write up”, I don’t need a play by play, but you need to demonstrate that you did the work yourself and understand what you did.  I don’t need to know every single time you right click, or every time you press the Add Data button.  I am more interested in your motivation in choosing colors/symbols rather than every step taken to do it.

On a tree loving note, I don’t need huge full page printouts of your figures on your hard copy, just give me little versions I can draw on.  I will grade the online ones, so make sure those are readable. 

Video Training: Some general video tutorials can be found at ESRI's website and also on YouTube.