New Mexico RGIS User Guide
This page provides a detailed description of using New Mexico Resource Geographic Information System Program to access New Mexico Geographic Data. The home page is divided into four categories: Main Menu; Quick Search bar; hyperlinks and icon links for Browse for Data and Advanced Spatial Search; and a Twitter box. Click on the links shown below to navigate to the respective sections.
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Main Menu
The Main Menu has nine hyperlinks: Home, About, FAQ, Feedback, User Guide, Glossary, Web Services, Order Help and Get Data.
Home displays the Home Page of the NM Resource Geographic Information System Program.
About displays information about the NM RGIS Program.
FAQ opens a page of Frequently Asked Questions related to accessing and using data from RGIS.
Feedback allows the user to send feedback, suggestions, or questions regarding the RGIS Program to the Webmaster. Fill in the text boxes: Subject (required), Message (required), Your
email address, and the Captcha security words (required). For the Captcha box, enter the two words separated by a space in the Captcha textbox, which is shown below. If you are unable to read the displayed words, click on the refresh
icon for new words. If you have speakers or any audio device, you can listen to the displayed words by clicking on the audio
icon. The Help
icon provides more instructions on using Captcha.
User Guide opens the NM RGIS Program User Guide.
Glossary opens a page with definitions for terms common in GIS documentation.
Web Services opens a page providing details about the Open Spatial Consortium (OGC) service standards supported by RGIS. This page also gives information on using these services to directly access RGIS data and map products without having to download individual data files.
Order Help gives information on how to order data from the RGIS Clearinghouse.
Get Data displays a drop-down menu to locate and access NM GIS data. The options are Browse Data and Advanced Spatial Search. Or, follow the links for the Browse for Data and Advanced Search in the upper right corner of the RGIS home page, under the Main Menu. Also, follow the icon link for Browse for Data and Advanced Spatial Search on the RGIS home page under "Welcome to the RGIS Clearinghouse" heading.
Quick Search Bar
This search bar allows users to perform a quick search on the data they are looking for, by title and by place.
- - By Title: Start typing the name or title of the data you are looking for and hit enter. The search results will be displayed on the home page. Clear the title textbox by selecting the entered title and hitting backspace. This erases all the searched results and returns to the default home page.
The available options for downloadable file formats are displayed below each data set along with other options for viewing Metadata, Web Services, and the Map preview. Also the theme to which the dataset belongs is displayed below each result name and the date the file was updated. The download options are displayed below.
- - By Place: Start typing the place name in the textbox next to ‘by place.’ A drop-down menu of filtered options will appear. Select the place name and hit enter. The results obtained will be displayed on the home page.
- - By Title and By Place: Start typing the name or title in the ‘by title’ textbox and filter the results specific to a location by selecting a place name from the drop-down menu in the ‘by place’ textbox. The drop-down menu appears when the user starts typing the place name in the ‘by place’ textbox.
Browse Data and Advanced Spatial Search
Data can be located and accessed by clicking the hyperlinks Browse for Data and Advanced Search on the upper right-hand corner below the Main Menu. alternatively, follow the icon links for the Browse for Data and Advanced Spatial Search on the RGIS home page under "Welcome to RGIS Clearinghouse" heading. The icon link will display a textbox with a description of the link on hover.
Browse Data
The Browse Data page allows users to browse data through the catalog structure. It allows filtering data either by Title, by Date Updated and by Theme or by any combination of the filters. The displayed data sets can be filtered further by Define Area of Interest by Place name or Quad name. The Browse Data page initially displays the data sets for all the available themes. The name of the current theme is displayed on top of the results window. The results for a specific theme can be viewed by clicking on a theme from the catalog structure.
- - To Filter Data by Title,type the title in the text box below and hit enter. The resulted data sets from all the theme are displayed in the Results column on the right-hand side of the page. To view the results by a specific theme, click on the theme from the catalog structure. For Example: Enter the title as 'Bernalillo' and the results for all the themes are displayed. To view the results specific to a theme click on the theme within the catalog structure.
- - To Filter Data by When Updated, click on the available options - All, 90 days, 6 months, 1 year.
- - To Filter Data by Theme from the available theme categories, click on the 'plus' button shown in front of the folder. This expands the data set folder to show the subsets of data in each category. Click on the data set icon to view the data sets on that particular subset. The available data sets of the current theme are displayed in the Results column.
- - Define Area of Interest can be used to filter the displayed data sets by entering the place name or quad name of the area of interest in the respective text boxes next to 'Placename' and 'Quadname.'
The icons displayed in front of each data set in the Results table tell about the type of file, whether it is a vector, raster image, vector or raster virtual mosaic, or static file dataset. The icon legend is shown below the browse data page under the data themes.
Advanced Spatial Search
Advanced Spatial Search allows user to search the data spatially by drawing a box on the map to select the data sets available at an area of interest along with the Browse for Data functionality such as Filter by Title, by Date Updated, and/or by Theme.
The map functionality includes: Full Extent, Zoom In, Zoom Out, Pan, Draw an Area of Interest and Reset. The scale bar is located on the lower left side and the coordinates of the mouse pointer (cursor)/extent of the drawn box are displayed on the lower right side of the map window.
To draw an Area of Interest click on the 'rectangle box' icon and draw a box by clicking on the map, hold the left hand mouse down and select a point and draw a box. Data sets for that point or box will be listed in the Results window below the map. The results can be further narrowed by selecting the themes for the catalog tree. The foot prints of the data sets are displayed on the map in a blue box. To turn off the layer foot prints expand the Layers drop down and uncheck the Results option. The layers drop down also allows user to check/uncheck the Area of Interest, Results and RGIS Base Maps. By default all the options are checked.
Results may also be further filtered by using the Define the Area of Interest by Placename or by Quadname option. The results of the search are displayed below the map window. The Advanced Spatial Search page initially displays all the available data sets.
Twitter Box
Twitter box displays the tweets about the New Mexico Resource Geographic Information System Program. Users can follow NM RGIS on Twitter @nmrgis.
