ArcGIS  Tags: arcgis gis maps mapping data  

Census Feature Class Codes (CFCC's) are used in coding features within some layers, such as the various categories of streets, roads, highways, and freeways in street or road layers. Knowing the meaning of these codes can help in selecting or clearly displaying features in a layer.

• List from ESRI.
• Complete documentation from Census (CFCC's begin on page 3-25, or p.77 of the Acrobat document)

You need to gather your data and save it in your personal folder before ever starting the program.  Gathering the data and massaging it so ArcGIS is able to open and analyze it can be the most difficult part of any project.

FIPS County Codes:  Most Census data uses filenames based on the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) codes as published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You can refer to the county codes at the NIST website.

For studying U.S. demographic patterns, see the guide on gathering census data, and other guides on the Census Bureau's American Factfinder and the CensusCD products from Geolytics (or their online Neighborhood Change Database). Besides what's mentioned in this guide, there is also a lot of basemap data in ArcView 3.x format (which ArcGIS 9 can use) on the five ESRI Data CD's in the CD cabinet.  Much data is available for download.  Also, many CDs from federal government agencies (USGS, etc.), located in the Public Documents CD Storage Cabinets on the 3rd floor of Bostock, contain files that can be read by ArcGIS.