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Climate Atlas of the United States Operation Getting Started
The first thing you should do is install your Climate Atlas. Please read the Atlas help section, "Installation", for instructions on how to install your Atlas. After that, come back here for further information. Access Methods There are two ways to access the maps provided with this Atlas.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each. 1. Accessing maps through the Climate Atlas interface: Using the Climate Atlas interface is simpler. It allows you to access maps without concerning yourself with where the maps are located (what folder they're in). Steps listed immediately below this paragraph tell how to access a map through the Climate Atlas interface. There is a slight inconvenience to using the Climate Atlas interface. Each time you access a map through the interface it spawns an instance of ArcExplorer. For some computers, a few instances of ArcExplorer (depending on your computer's available memory) will "use up" all available memory and cause the computer to hang. You can avoid a hang-up caused by this problem if you close the ArcExplorer window you were just using, before you request another map from the interface.
2. Accessing maps through ArcExplorer directly: Using ArcExplorer directly allows you to access all maps from within the same instance of ArcExplorer. So, you won't "use up" all available memory and cause the computer to hang (or, if it does hang up, it won't be due to too many instances of ArcExplorer). Steps listed immediately below this paragraph tell how to access a map through ArcExplorer. The disadvantage is that using ArcExplorer from the desktop requires that you use the element cross-reference table of file names to know which file contains the maps of the climatic element you're interested in seeing. You have to know that to tell ArcExplorer which file to open.
When you have finished viewing the map, you may open another project from within the same instance of ArcExplorer. If you made any changes to the presentation of the project you opened, ArcExplorer will ask you if you want to save your changes. If you installed your Atlas onto your computer's hard disk drive, you may save the changes. However, if you save changes to a map with numeric values on it, the maps' themes will lose their pre-determined colors in their legends. If you did not install the Atlas onto your computer's hard disk drive, you are running it from the CD. You cannot save changes to the CD, so you should answer "No" to the question.
Downloaded Thursday, 01-Aug-2013 12:24:03 EDT Last Updated Wednesday, 20-Aug-2008 12:59:18 EDT by andy.goss@noaa.gov Please see the NCDC Contact Page if you have questions or comments. |