I have spend 5 hours to create the how poster with the help of the tutorial. Unfortunately my ArcGIS10 has crushed during the time span of creating a picture file out. Therefore, my file became corrupted and forced me to do this project again, which took me about another 4 hours. The ArcGIS10 is a great program with lots of functionality to create the maps that are needed. However there are some draw backs with its complexity and huge memory spaces it takes to run some of the calculations and creations.
There are lots of advantages of using GIS program to create maps. First, there are many functionality within the program to help you create maps. just as loading some of the given layers of the county map. Using the existing data to help you make your own map with your own purpose. Second, there are many features that will make your map look more complete, such as the legends, scare bar and the North Stars. You can change to different symbols to represent schools, and change colors to population density coverage. GIS program has very strong editing capability. It is able to help you create new streets and name these streets on your already existed map. Lastly, it has features like Excel to help you create charts and do statistics for you with its calculator and graph functions.
With all the great functions and features GIS has to offer, it has some downsides to its nature. GIS program is very complex comparing to Neogeography programs such as Google Map. I am a beginner with GIS program, and I would not able to finish this project without using the tutorial guide. The user interface is friendly, but with some professional terms and many buttons, the program is still very confusing when I start using it. Various functions come with complex multiple steps to achieve it, such as create a population density coverage. This program is very limited to professionals who are seeking for creating formal maps and scientific data. Beginners are not able to pick up this program very easily, and this program is certainly not for everyone who wants to create a personal map on his own leisure time.
Although GIS program is very limited to certain group of people and requires professional education and high skills to run it as its full potential, it has some great functions and features to help professional geographers to create very good maps. I have only begin to use this program, therefore there are many more functions that I have not known yet. I think GIS program has great depth and potential to help professional geographers to complete any mapping tasks that are given to them
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