A quick tour of temporal data management and visualization

What follows is a high-level overview of the collection of user interface components that allows you to visualize and manage your temporal data.

Time properties

After you have added temporal data into ArcMap, ArcGlobe, and ArcScene, you have to enable time on the data and set time properties on the layer to visualize it over time. These properties can be set on the Time tab of the Layer Properties dialog box. Besides defining the way time values are stored in the dataset, you can also specify the temporal reference and other display properties of the temporal data.

Learn more about enabling time on the layer

Time Slider

Once you have set the time properties on your temporal data, you can visualize the time-enabled layers using the time slider. The Time Slider window can be invoked from the Tools toolbar. You can optionally change time slider options such as the time extent for visualization and the display format of the time text on the Time Slider window.

Geoprocessing tools

There are various geoprocessing tools that you can choose specifically for organizing and managing temporal data. The tools can be used one at a time or chained together in a model or a script.