Before you can start digitizing, you must set up your tablet and prepare the map from which you want to digitize features. To use a digitizing tablet with ArcMap, it must have WinTab™-compliant digitizer driver software. To find out if a WinTab-compliant driver is available for your digitizer, see the documentation that came with the tablet or contact the manufacturer.

After installing the driver software, use the WinTab manager setup program to configure the buttons on your digitizer puck. One puck button should be configured to perform a left mouse click to digitize point features and vertices; another button should be configured to perform a left double-click to finish digitizing line or polygon features. You may also want to configure a button to perform a right-click so you can access context menus.

If you installed ArcMap before installing your digitizer, the Digitizer tab may not appear in the Editing Options dialog box. To add the tab, you must register the ArcMap digitizer.dll file. See the segment on registering the digitizer.dll file for more information.

Attach the paper map to your digitizing tablet using masking tape, drafting tape, or a special residue-free putty. Drafting tape looks like masking tape, but leaves less residue when it’s removed.

You must always register your paper map before you can begin digitizing from it. This involves establishing control points to register the paper map to the geographic space of your GIS data. If your map has a grid or a set of known ground points, you can use these as your control points. If not, choose four to 10 distinctive locations and mark them on your map with a pencil. Give each location a unique number and write down its actual ground coordinates. Control points can also be saved to and loaded from x,y coordinates stored in a comma-delimited text file.