Welcome to the Map Suite GIS Editor introduction! This series of lessons will walk you through the creation of your first map. Along the way, you'll learn about the basics of GIS and how to use many of the core features of the GIS Editor application. At the end of the final lesson, you'll have built a demo project containing a thematic map, worked with data joins and geoprocessing wizards, created data from scratch and added labels and legends.

Lesson 1: Creating Your First Map
Discover the value of geographic information systems and how they're being used throughout the world today. Then, get acquainted with the Map Suite GIS Editor and start building your first map from scratch.

Lesson 2: Adding Layers To Your Map
Learn about layers and how they are a key building block of every map you create with the GIS Editor. You'll add two vector layers to your map and then see how you can interact with them on the Layer List.

Lesson 3: Merging In Your Own Custom Data
Shows how Data Join can be used to merge sales data into the geographic data we’re using on the map. Join in the sample set of custom sales data and drop Alaska and Hawaii as part of this process. Add the resulting new layer to the map and remove USStates.

Lesson 4: Styling Your Layers
Offers an overview of some of the types of styles available. Shows how you can easily load a style from the Style Library. Add a simple style to the new US States layer from the Style Wizard, make the fill color transparent and put a bold outline around each state.

Lesson 5: Adding Labels
Shows how to use labels to convey meaningful information to people who are viewing your map.

Lesson 6: Viewing, Querying and Selecting Data
Use the View Data window to look at all the attribute data behind each feature in a layer. Use the Query system to filter that data down to a specific subset. Select individual features as a result of those queries that you want to work with in some way. We can use this in our sample to query all states whose total sales were greater than some figure, then export them.

Lesson 7: Geoprocessing
In this lesson we will be doing a Dissolve on the joined US States layer in order to get 6 or 7 sales territories (for example: Northwest, Southwest, South, Southeast, Midwest, Northeast). This will be a new layer that we add to the map.

Lesson 8: Advanced Styling
Use class breaks, filters and other advanced styles for more visually compelling presentation of data. For our sample project, we'll add a class break on the joined US States layer so that each state will be colored based on its sales figures.

Lesson 9: Editing and Creating Data
Demonstrate creating a new Shapefile, setting up columns and editing or drawing new features. For the sample, create a point-based Shapefile with locations for regional offices in each sales territory as well as a corporate headquarters. We can demonstrate loading up some nice icons for the points from the built-in icon library.

Lesson 10: Reprojection
A brief overview of what projection is and how you can change the projection of your map to suit your needs. For the sample we can reproject from Geographic (lat/lon) to Spherical Mercator.

Lesson 11: Getting Your Maps Ready for Presentation
Adding titles, logos and legends to your map. Printing your map and its decorations.

Lesson 12: Printing
Printing your map and its decorations.

Lesson 13: Sharing Your Project
Using the Package Project feature to share with other users of the GIS Editor.

The following lesson will be forthcoming:

GIS Editor Lesson 14: SDK Extensibility