Using the Ribbon Bar

Most of the actions you'll perform in the GIS Editor can be accessed from the Ribbon Bar. This bar runs horizontally across the top of the application's main window and is divided into tabs, each of which focuses on a specific set of tools – for instance, selecting features, measuring features or geoprocessing data. The ribbon is designed to make activities visible without burying them in menus and offer access to the GIS Editor's entire suite of tools from any screen.

You can change which tab of the ribbon bar is being displayed at any time by clicking on a new tab, or by scrolling with your mouse wheel.

In the upper left corner of the ribbon bar is a blue button which opens the GIS Editor's Main Menu. The main menu can be used to open, save, print or create a new project, change application options, view account information and more.

The Home Tab has many of the same options as the Main Menu for quick access. It also comes with additional controls to allow you to add layers, create and manage bookmarks, view data, and more.

The second tab in the ribbon bar is the Select Features tab. This section of the editor provides various tools to select features on the map, find features based on conditions and keywords, and export selected features to a separate file.

The Tools Tab contains several tools available to you to process data. Some of these tools are merging features, splitting features, and joining data. This section also contains where scripts can be ran in Python, Ruby, or C#.

Everything you need to create and manipulate features can be found in the Edit Tab. Here, you can draw and edit features, change attribute data, and perform various Shape Operations to get a feature's shape just the way you want it.

The Measure Tab gives you tools to measure the distance and area of features on the map in several types of unit measurement. There are also tools available that let you draw shapes on your map and get the measurements of them quickly, before committing a feature's shape and having to readjust. Any measurements you have can also be exported to another file.

The Adornments Tab lets you customize your map specific to you by giving you tools to create map legends, custom North arrows, placing logos, and setting up how you want your scale bars to be displayed.

Above the ribbon bar is the Quick Access Toolbar, where you can place shortcuts to features that you use often. The Quick Access Toolbar is always visible no matter what tab or screen you're working in. To add a button from any ribbon tab to the Quick Access Toolbar, simply right-click on the button and choose “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”.