On the left, you can see the Toolbar. You will use the tools to look at, ask questions of, and change the map.

The main window is the Geographic Data Viewer Map Window, where the map is displayed. Below it is the Attribute Panel where you will look at information about features on the map. On the far right is the Layer/Legend Panel where you control what is visible on the map.

If you are feeling lost already... don't worry. Everything will be described in depth in the coming pages.

 The Easiest way to locate an address on the map is with the address matching tool. This tool allows you to locate a street address or cross streets.

1. Locate and press this button (bottom left of toolbar) to locate your address

It is located on this portion of your screen in the Toolbar

2. A form will appear on the bottom portion of your screen as indicated by the red arrow

3. Enter Your target address in the "Street" field

4. Enter your 5 digit zip code in the field marked "Zone"

5. Leave the field marked "Cross Street" blank. Alternately, you can enter the nearest intersection to your target by entering the your target street (without the srteet #) in in the "Street" field and a cross street (without the srteet #) in the "Cross street" field. When locating cross street intersections, be sure to leave the "Zone" field blank and

6. Press "Locate"

7. Click on the blue hyperlinked number representing your street as indicated by the red arrow. If multiple addresses appear, click on the link with a higher score. 8. Click this button in the left toolbar to zoom out and find your watershed!

Suppose you want to go north (up the map). Grab the Pan tool and grab (press and hold down the mouse button) onto the map and pull it down. Whatever part of the map you grab with the little hand will end up where you let go of the mouse button. Just like in real life. This works for moving any direction on the map.

 The Zoom tools are unique to digital maps. They are very much like using an actual magnifying glass, as the icons imply. The main difference is you can't burn ants with them.

The tool with the little plus sign lets you 'zoom in', while the one with the little minus sign lets you 'zoom out'. There are a couple of ways to use these tools.

First, select one of them, go somewhere on the map and press the left mouse button. If it is the Zoom In tool the map zooms in. The center of the new map is wherever on the map you clicked the mouse button. The Zoom Out tool zooms out the same way.

Second, you can zoom in more precisely by pressing the mouse button somewhere on the map, holding it down, and dragging a box. When you let go of the mouse button the new map extent will be the area defined by the box. When zooming out, the area defined by the box becomes the new map extent.

On a Geographic Data Viewer map, a maximum and minimum scale may be set. A maximum scale is set so you can't zoom in further than the data is designed to be used at. A minimum scale is so that people don't zoom out beyond where there is information.
Click here for a relevant, but not essential, discussion of scale.

As well, some layers or labels for layers may only appear at certain scales. This is to improve the speed of the maps and to prevent them from getting cluttered at different scales.

There are a few other handy buttons that will make life easier.

 The first is the Previous Extent tool. This button jumps back to the previous map extent you were at. If you want to go back to where you were three zoom-ins ago, press it three times.

 Another button is the Zoom to Full Extent button. It zooms you out to the maximum extent of the information.

 The Zoom to Layer Extent button zooms to the maximum extent of the active layer. Next, you will find out how to make a layer active.