Tips and Tricks

Layer Files

Layer Files can save you a tremendous amount of time when creating maps. If you use certain feature classes or shapefiles in the majority of your maps, save those as layer files once you have the symbology set up. Then each time you create a new map you can open these layer files and all of the properties such as symbology, scale dependency and labels will already be set.

Interactive Maps

You can view more data in our Interactive Maps by zooming into a smaller area. As you zoom in, certain layers become visible that were not at the full extent of the map.

You can also turn on layers by clicking the Layers button in the menu. This will display a dialog of all the layers in the map and let you turn them on and/or off as desired.

Our new map viewer works best with the latest version of Micorsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Mozilla FireFox browsers in Windows 7 and above. Please download and install one of these browsers prior to using our new map viewer.

Map Templates

Did you know that you can use map templates to speed up your map making? You can create a map with your logo, a generic title, disclaimer, etc. and save it as a template. Then you can use the template to print any map. You can create different templates for different sizes of maps to allow you to quickly choose and print your map data. Please e-mail us at if there is a map that you would like to see added to the map gallery.

Please e-mail us at CentralGIS@co.hernando.fl.us if there is a map that you would like to see added to the map gallery.