Week10-Flow Maps, There's an art to it.

There is an art to making those arrows stay at the end of the line.  This week was an illustrator challenge that I'll battle again.  Flow charts are very fancy ways to show general information. It's a good tool for highlighting a particular "point" to be made.  Our task to reflect the world immigration to the USA for 2007.  We used actual data, collected what was missing, calculated our flow line size; then with all efforts fought to put it on the map.  Easier said than accomplished (at least for me). At some point I had to choose, fight the arrows or be on time. I took the latter.

 

Process Summary           Week10 Cartography- flow chart

1)       Moved data from drives r: to s:, created new folders & extracted files as needed.

2)      Opened table 3 data to determine data available.  Opened new excel file to obtain totals, countries for regions, percentages, etc. to determine values for flow lines.

3)      Created chart showing World Region Totals, percentage of US total. Used it to do formula given in lab for line size.  Will use four flow line sizes in chart.  Data breaks into 4 sizes by the line size.  A portion of this chart will likely go on map. Had to obtain totals for Central America, Caribbean and North America by using combination of both data tables. One to determine which countries were in each region, then 2^nd table to get data to create totals for region.  Placed all on chart for later use.

4)      Obtained metadata from ArcCatalog before making maps. Both files have same projections so we’re alright here.  Created new map with both .shp files.  Began creating individual map layers for each world region.  Have 8 layers total.  Do not need USA with individual states. Do not need labels for each country, but printed out map with them to identify origin areas for flow map.

5)      Created base map: Week10Cart USImmFlow.mxd  made copy before converting.

6)      Added legend with region color scheme for legend, added addition map elements.

7)      In AI, sorting layers, world is made up of stripe layers, not good. Trashed this map, started over.

8)      Made new map in arcmap, took less than 45 min, good. Used regional shapefiles did not use USA with states or world.shp files. Saved copy & exported to ai for second  time.

9)      First line & a row ok. Europe line ok. Cannot get arrow to work at all without tip at end or beginning anchor point. 2 hours later arrow will not attach to line.

10)   Choice is to move on to add additional lines & enhancements or miss deadline.  Choose to miss arrow attachment.  Struggling with layers. At least the flow is visible.  Nearly reasonable.