10 replies to this topic

[merft]

Curious to know what folks are using to create street indices. I used Carto-Index years ago, but I'm not longer on a Mac. I have also played with MapPublisher's index creator. I am curious of any others that might be out there for either Adobe Illustrator or ESRI ArcGIS.

Thanks.

[CHART]

Tom,

MapPublisher does an OK job of creating street indexes.

However if you have a GIS like Arc GIS you might look into setting up a grid in the form of polygons. Add a grid number or text field to your street table. Populate your new field by reselecting streets base on polygon intersection. Create a text report you can manipulate in DTP environment. (Obviously a field with names should be present in your street layer).

[merft]

However if you have a GIS like Arc GIS you might look into setting up a grid in the form of polygons. Add a grid number or text field to your street table. Populate your new field by reselecting streets base on polygon intersection. Create a text report you can manipulate in DTP environment. (Obviously a field with names should be present in your street layer).

This is what we are currently doing. Street map projects have been few and far between so it has not been much of an issue.

We use ETGeoWizards to create the polygon grid, split the roads layer by the grid, then transfer attributes and export the table. There are some final manipulations in Access.

Just curious to other methods or software on the market. Haven't looked for this type of software for a while.

Thanks.

[Hans van der Maarel]

I use a combination of MAPublisher and FME. MAPublisher to generate the basic index, FME to clean it up:

- Condense multiple entries into one: 1st Street, A1 and 1st Street, A2 would be merged to 1st Street, A1-A2
- Combine indexes from several map sheets into one
- Split certain text strings. E.g. in Dutch street names can sometimes begin with "De" or other forms like that. Like "De Straat", which is commonly indexed as: "Straat, de"

[Rick Dey]

We use MAPublisher to generate a base index and then we go thru it manually to merge the multiple grid entries and correct issues with cross grid entries. MP creates the index coordinate based on the anchor point of the text so if your text crosses a grid line it will not be (for our standards) properly indexed.

[mattm]

In the next week or two MAPublisher will have a new release, version 7.1.2 which will include some enhancements to the the indexing. For Instance, when a index is created in 7.1.2 it will condense multiple entries into a more appropriate form.

Instead of an Index beign created with entries such as:

John st A1
John st A2
John st A3

It will now be created as: John st A1,A2,A3

Also since MAPublisher 7.0 when creating an index there are two options "Make Index based on label position" and "Make index based on label position and matching feature position". If the "Make index based on label position" the index would be created where the labels anchor point is. If the "Make index based on label position and matching feature position" option was selected the index would be created for the feature. For Example, If the feature was a street over multiple grid cells the index would be created with all the cells represented.

[wick]

Does anybody create the street index (or any index for that matter) and layout within ArcGIS?
I can generate the index by building index rectangle polygons and transferring attributes as others have suggested, however my biggest stumbling block is getting the index formatted properly in the page layout. I can build a text box with multiple columns, however I can't seem to adjust tab stops to format the index in a nice clean way. Any advice?
Does anybody know of an extension or plug-in that streamlines the whole process from generating the index to formatting in the page layout?

Thanks,
-Jesse

[peanut]

Does anybody create the street index (or any index for that matter) and layout within ArcGIS?
I can generate the index by building index rectangle polygons and transferring attributes as others have suggested, however my biggest stumbling block is getting the index formatted properly in the page layout. I can build a text box with multiple columns, however I can't seem to adjust tab stops to format the index in a nice clean way. Any advice?
Does anybody know of an extension or plug-in that streamlines the whole process from generating the index to formatting in the page layout?

Thanks,
-Jesse

For this sort of stuff I usually build the index in Excel.

If you are working from an attribute table in ArcMap you can export the table and then open it in Excel. Once you are in Excel you can format as you like and just copy and paste from Excel back into ArcMap. ArcMap keeps the formating rather nicely.

Hope this helps.

Rich

[ELeFevre]

This is a great question for the good people at the ESRI Mapping Center. Like Rich, I would do this in Excel/Illustrator and then bring the table back into my layout either by copy/paste or by inserting it as file (EMF or raster) from Illustrator.

[pd3244]

MapLogic makes a very good third party extension for ArcGIS for creating multi-layout map books; there is an indexing feature (along with a create great 'create grid' function) that I like --- note the sophisticated 'consolidation' function for multi-grid streets is only at the 'pro' license....sounds like the same functionality Matt discussed at MP 7.2.

If you make a lot of map books or serialized map sheets; I would highly recommend the MapLogic extension ( LayOut Manager). I believe they have a 30-day trial download.

Paul

[MapMedia]

If your final map is made in Illustrator, it is best to make the index there, no?
I know there is an Illy index script out there, though I haven't used it myself, but have heard others* refer to it.

* hint: Got Carto Skills?