More recent streets data for the United States, Canada, and Europe are available with the StreetMap Pro and StreetMap Premium products. For more information, visit www.esri.com and select ESRI Data under the Products tab.
The StreetMap USA table of contents is organized at two levels. It is mainly organized into thematic group layers, such as Roads, Water, Landmarks, and so on. Within each thematic group, the data layers are organized according to their usable scale range. Typically, there are three or four scale-dependent datasets within each thematic group layer, for example, Interstates, Highways, and Local Streets. These layers provide the appropriate feature density, level of generalization, symbolization, and labeling for each scale range. For convenience, these scale ranges are given names that indicate the level at which they are displayed. There are a few exceptions, but in general, the ranges follow the organization below:
National Level: Greater than 1: 20,000,000
State Level: 1:1,500,000 to 20,000,000
Regional Level: 1:200,000 to 1,500,000
Local Level: 1:20,000 to 200,000
Detail Level: Less than 1:20,000
This thematic approach to layer organization allows all the layers of the same type to be contained within a single group layer. The thematic group layers can be easily expanded to show the various datasets arranged by display scale. This permits an entire thematic group to be turned on or off with a single click. The scale-dependent layers within a thematic group can also be individually turned on and off. For example, you can turn off the entire Landmarks group layer or just turn off the Local Streets layer.
Dynamic label placement is used throughout the entire StreetMap USA.mxd. The labeling is scale dependent and based on size or importance. A label flag field has been added to many layers to improve labeling options. For some layers, label classes have been defined but are not turned on.
The streets data has been presorted to draw the road classes in the correct order for cartographic display. The ArcGIS 9 Layer Drawing Option (LDO) has been implemented for a number of individual layers. These include city points, landmark points, and streets. The data frame-based Advance Drawing Option (ADO) is not utilized for the StreetMap USA.mxd. If you want to use the ADO to alter the cartographic appearance, you can access this command by right-clicking in the data frame or on the data frame name in the table of contents.
You can zoom to any area of the StreetMap USA map document and convert the compressed street data into other types of feature classes, such as shapefiles, personal geodatabases, or file geodatabases.
The StreetMap USA layers are defined with default scales that display the appropriate types of features. When the StreetMap USA.mxd is opened or the StreetMap USA group layer file is added in ArcMap, a map of the United States is displayed. The map shows the state boundaries, interstate highways, major cities, and major water bodies. You can click an area or drag a box on the map using the Zoom In tool. ArcMap displays a map of the specified area and draws the default set of features.
Zooming in on the map or changing the view scale changes the map content if it reaches a different level of detail. For example, at the local level, ArcMap will draw the city map with more details including local streets, highways, urban areas, and airports. Default colors, symbols, and label fonts will be applied to the features accordingly.
You can change the settings, add new layers, or remove layers. You can also save the settings into a layer file. The StreetMap USA.lyr file, which you can add to any other map document, is provided on the ESRI Data & Maps/StreetMap USA DVD.
Group layers can be turned on or off in the table of contents to increase or decrease the feature content of the map display. Entire thematic group layers or the scale-dependent layers within each group layer can be turned on or off to modify the map display. Labeling can also be turned on or off for each layer.
You can also use ArcCatalog to view the StreetMap layers. Choose the StreetMap USA.lyr file from the DVD and click the Preview tab. Use the Zoom In and Zoom Out tools to display different layers of the map.
The StreetMap USA dataset includes a routing service that you can use with the StreetMap Find Route dialog box to find routes within the United States. To use the service, at the top of the Options tab on the Find Route dialog box, browse to the streets.rs file, located in the Usa\Streetmap_usa\Streets folder on the ESRI Data & Maps/StreetMap USA DVD.
You can easily create a new address locator in ArcMap using the StreetMap USA streets data on the DVD. Choose US Streets with City State Zip as the locator style and enter the full path to the streets.sdc file, for example, e:\Usa\Streetmap_usa\Streets\streets.sdc.