This series of pages explains the basics of ArcView version 3.1, a GIS developed by Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). It is not a comprehensive overview, since I have tended to focus on the topics I have found most useful in my own work, and neglected other topics. Rather, these pages are meant to give you a some familiarity with ArcView's main functions and capabilities. Ultimately, however, you don't learn ArcView by reading about it; you have to play with it yourself. So if your computer has the RAM to run ArcView and a browser at the same time, you should use these pages for quick reference as you experiment with the software. ArcView's dynamic menu structure and symbols may appear a bit daunting at first, but the on-line help utility is excellent. So jump in!
If you have had any experience with object-oriented programming (OOP), you should know that ArcView is based on an OOP design. In other words, the software creates and manipulates instances of object classes that have defined properties and behaviors. A class hierarchy defines the relationships between classes, so that classes inherit the properties and behaviors of their parent classes. The Avenue scripting utility lets you access ArcView's OOP capabilities: you can instantiate and manipulate objects of existing classes, although you can't define new classes yourself.
At the University of Delaware, ArcView is available on Strauss, one of the main UNIX servers, as well as on the PC's in the CANR GIS/CAD lab. I recommend the lab PC's for several reasons. Your disk allocation on the UNIX composers is limited and easily exhausted by GIS files; Strauss's response time is generally slower than PC's; and the UNIX version of ArcView seems to be somewhat less stable on the composers than the PC version.
To start an ArcView session on Strauss: log into an X-terminal and open a Strauss window, or else open an Exceed (X-term emulation program for PC's) window to a Strauss from your PC. Type arcview & at the shell prompt (the & character starts the session as a background process). Be patient; it may takes a little while for the window to come up. If you open the session without a blank View window, Click on the "Views" icon in the Project window, then click on "New" to open a blank view. Under the View menu, select "Add Theme" or click the "Add Theme" button (the button with the plus sign), type $AVDATA in the "directory" field and click "OK" to list the available data directories. The data you want are in the "esridata/usa" subdirectory path.
Jian Chen at UD's Research Data Management Service has developed an ArcView Tutorial using Strauss that you might want to check out.
To start an ArcView session on a lab PC:
double click on the ArcView shortcut icon 
.
If you open the session without a blank View window, Click on the "Views"
icon in the Project window, then click on "New" to open a blank view.
Under the View menu, select "Add Theme." The "directory" field should
specify the path c:\esri\esridata; select the "usa" directory
and pick the shapefiles you would like to work with.
Now check out the images from a sample ArcView session (below) to familiarize yourself with the work environment. Some red annotations are added to clarify various points covered below.
An ArcView Project comprises a set of Views, Tables, Charts, Layouts and Scripts, all available as separate windows in the ArcView session.
ArcView's dynamic menu structure depends on which type of window is currently active (denoted by blue title bar). When a View window is active (as shown below), the View menu is activated; when a Table window is active, the Table menu is activated; etc. You will also note that various menu choices, buttons and tools are greyed out and non-operational if they are not relevant or appropriate. For example, if none of the Themes in your View is active, all the choices in the Theme menu will be greyed out.
When a View is active, operations in the Theme menu are performed on the active Theme(s) in the active View. Similarly, when a Table is active, operations in the Field menu are performed on the active field in the active Table.
You will usually start a new ArcView project by opening a new View from
the Project window. A View typically contains one or more map Themes
or
spatial data layers. Types of themes include vector shapefiles
(as in the View window above), raster grids, images, etc.
To add a Theme to a View, you can click the Add Theme button 
to access the same Add Theme dialog box you access via the menu (View--Add
Theme).
When you first add a Theme to a View, it doesn't display until you check the box to the left of the Theme name in the View's legend. You can turn Theme displays on and off at any time.
You can sort themes in the View legend by dragging and dropping them with the mouse in order to specify their display order: the View displays the checked Themes listed in the View legend in bottom-to-top order. In this example, the rivers theme is listed above the states and lakes themes, and is thus overlaid on them. A typical display sequence might include a background image or grid, superimposed polygon shapefiles, then superimposed line and/or point shapefiles.
The View menu lets you pan and zoom around the map, add new themes, and control the View Properties.
By default, Views have no specified projection. ArcView data are assumed to be in decimal-degree lat-long format, although a View can display shapefiles, grids or images in any projection or reference system. If the themes in your view are all lat-long data, you can specify a projection for your view, and ArcView will re-draw the map in that projection. You can then add additional themes such as grids or images which are based on that projection. Note, however, that a View cannot reconcile themes in different projections.
The Theme menu manages one or more active themes. First, click on a theme in the View's theme list to activate it; hold the Shift key down as you click in order to activate more than one theme. Active themes are indicated by indicated by a raised entry in the View's theme list.
The Theme menu accesses various dialog windows that let you edit a theme's elements, convert the theme to a shapefile (or create a copy if it's already a shapefile), control the theme legend display, label the theme, access the tabular data associated with the theme, select elements of the theme based on database criteria or spatial relationship to other themes, or create buffers around elements in a theme. The Theme-Properties sub-menu accesses label settings, geocoding settings, editing settings, scale control of display, and hot-linking of theme elements so that a mouse click on an element performs some action in the project.
The View menu system includes the following buttons ...
Tools are more interactive than buttons. For example, you can
zoom in via either button 
or tool 
, but they work differently. Clicking the Zoom button simply
zooms the view by a predefined amount. Clicking the Zoom tool doesn't
re-draw the view until you drag a zoom box in the view or click a new center
of view, and the tool remains active until you select another tool or activate
another type of window. Note that you can set the scale of the View
by simply entering a scale value into the Scale field to the right of the
View tool bar.
An ArcView Table is typically a dBase (.DBF) format file. Each shapefile has an associated Theme Table of data matched to individual features (as shown above) via a feature identification field. Or a Table may be a separate dBase file that can be joined to a destination theme table via corresponding values in specified fields in the two tables.
In the diagram below we have opened the Table for the States theme via
the Theme--Table menu or the Theme Table button 
available in the View menu. Now that a Table window is active,
ArcView provides a menu, buttons and tools appropriate for Tables.
Note that the Project window now lists the available tables rather than
views.
ArcView On-Line Help and Documentation
ESRI provides only limited hardcopy documentation for ArcView, but copious on-line help and documentation available through the Help--Help Topics menu. You can access information via the Index, by simply typing in a topic word or phrase; via the Table of Contents which has extensive information about ArcView organized in nested menus; or via the "Find" utility to access information by keywords or phrases.