GIS Dictionary

Definitions for GIS terms related to operations such as analysis, GIS modeling and web-based GIS, cartography, and Esri software.

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data frame

  1. [ESRI software] A map element that defines a geographic extent, a page extent, a coordinate system, and other display properties for one or more layers in ArcMap. A dataset can be represented in one or more data frames. In data view, only one data frame is displayed at a time; in layout view, all a map's data frames are displayed at the same time. Many cartography texts use the term "map body" to refer to what ESRI calls a data frame. data frame Illustration