shrug-l: GIS/Adobe Illustrator combination

Tim Spivey tspivey at tiftcounty.org
Fri Jul 27 12:38:05 EDT 2007


Nonie -

Here are some thoughts from one of my old graphics gurus ...

"We have software called Avenza out of Canada that we can use with AI.
It is a plugin that cost about $700 plus.  I found 5-6 years or so ago
it was much easier for me to trace, create and edit simple shape files
in AI than in ArcGis. The ability to export those files with a projected
shapefile from AI was really a quick work-around for me.

Esri has really improved a lot in the last 5 years.  But I still use AI
to create a special finished presentation map when needed without using
Avenza. I just export my layout depending on the size of the map at
about 300 dpi as an AI file.  The beauty of this is everything comes in
on its own layer.  So if your text is annotation it will have it's own
layer. I have found when you have say 20+ layers in the view ArcGis will
try to take say, the bottom 2 layers and combine them into a raster file
instead of vector.  This is a pain if you want to change something.  

But I've worked out a way to prevent that most of the time.  It is so
much easier to add graphic changes in AI than in ArcGis.  When you do
this the map is no longer projected.  (Over the years I have always
asked myself why doesn't Esri hire AI to design their graphic
interface.)  Also nice that you can export or save your finished map in
many, many formats.  I look at every map layer as graphic information,
just in ArcGis it has data attached to it. I treat ArcGis data exported
to AI for presentation map as graphic layers, no differently than if I
am designing a logo in layers.  Of course I have to keep the integrity
of the map such as scale etc.

I have to agree with some of the Shrugs comments I have read in the last
few days. Text placement is very time consuming.  Probably everyone
knows this, but I stumbled on this a month ago. It has sped up text
placement for me. I would adjust my text in my view but when I went to
my layout to see it, it would be to far or too close or too small or too
large. So it was back and forth.  Then I found that as long as my text
was annotation in my view, I could adjust everything in my Layout.  Just
doulble click with the back arrow and it is highlighted in the layout.
In layout what you see is what you get."

Hope that helps,
Tim Spivey
Tift County

-----Original Message-----
From: Nonie Castro [mailto:nonie_castro at coxtarget.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 9:16 AM
To: Tim Spivey; shrug-l at lists.dep.state.fl.us
Subject: RE: shrug-l: RE: Books - GIS/Adobe Illustrator combination? 



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