Hi Derek, Thanks for your responses.
I have been struggling to create the new, decent Shapefiles for Points, Polylines, and Polygons in ArcView v9.3 for quite a while. I read the materials you cited, but I am still not able to get a good start in creating Points, Polylines, and Polygons in ArcView v9.3. Let me describe the following things I did and the difficulties I have had:
1) From the book "Getting To Know ArcView Desktop, Second Edition Updated for ArcView 9" by Tim Ormsby, et.al, I learned (i) Getting started with maps and data: Chapter 3 (Exploring ArcMap) and Chapter 4 (Exploring ArcCatalog) - Cities Earhart visited and her Flight Path. (ii) Creating and editing data: Chapter 14 (Building geodatabases) and Chapter 15 (Creating features), and Chapter 16 (Editing features and attributes). Then I started a new project and had a layer of USA Map (dtl-st) created. Then I tried to get a path of 5 U. S. cities (Baltimore, Atlanta, Omaha, Denver, and LA) I visited. I had the 5 U. S. cities as 5 Points in my ArcCatalog v9.3. But I can not make the 5 Points appeared in my new layer "5USCitiesChangVisited" in ArcMap v9.3.
2) From the book "Introduction to Geographic Information Systems", 5th Edition, by Kang-tsung Chang, I studied Chpater 3 (Vector Data Model) and tried to do his Task 1: Examine the Data File Structure of Coverage and Shapefile on Page 60. I have encounter a serious difficulty to save the Feature Class to Shapefile in Step 5 on Page 61 - error message "output file does not exist"??!!
3) From the "www.gps.caltech.edu/gislab/.../creating_and_editing_shapefiles", I can do "Creating and Editing Shapfes for Points, Polylines, and Polygons" without any problems. But I do not know the x,y-corrdinates for the Points, Polylines, and Polygons I created!!!
4) I just read "Linear Referencing in ArcGIS 9" from the "HELP" menu. But I am still lost like a blind man lost in the darkness.
I am lost badly in creating Points, Polylines, and Polygons in ArcCatalog/ArcMap v9.3. In 1), I do not know how to my data into geodatabase properly and correctively!!! In 2), I do not know why I get that error and how to resolve it. In 3), I have no ideas how the x,y-coordinates should be set up to show me where my maps are. Please help and guide me to the promised land of ArcView v9.3.
Thanks,
Scott Chang
