The Wildlife Society of Florida

Tech Corner (by Mike Milleson and guests)

8/8/2011

Add free high resolution base maps to ArcMap projects.

If you make the occasional map using ArcMap, you’ve probably dealt with the hassle of finding quality imagery to use as the base layer for the data that you’re trying to display. Here I’m going to walk you through an easy way to add free base maps straight from ESRI into your mapping projects:

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Before we begin, here’s the word from ESRI’s website:

“ArcGIS Online standard map services are available at no cost regardless of use.”

Sweet, free maps.

Note that this is a recent change, last month there was a fee associated with commercial use.

This technique works in both the 9.x versions of ArcMap and in version 10. In version 10 there is a second way to add these base maps, and I’ll show you that too.

Let’s start with the old way, since it probably applies to more users.

In any open ArcMap document, click on the add data button.

If you’re not already pointing at a specific location, you should see this.

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Go ahead and double-click “GIS Servers”.

If you don’t see the “GIS Servers” option, click the up one level button until you do see it.

Next double-click “Add ArcGIS Server”.

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We’re going to keep “Use GIS Services” selected, and click “Next”.

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Now keep “Internet” selected, and type “http://services.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/services” in the dialogue box for “Server URL:”. You can leave the User Name and Password blank.

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Then click “Finish”.

From now on, when you go to add data, you can click the drop down window next to “Look in” and select GIS Servers, then select the server we just added.

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This will give you a list of imagery to choose from. The second option, “ESRI_Imagery_World_2D” is a handy one.

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That’s it. You should have a nice reference base map for viewing your data.

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