9 replies to this topic

[Jakov Novotni]

Hi, this is my first post...
Can someone point me to the software for drawing city maps. I would have aerial photo to draw over.

Working in illustrator with parallel lines or overlaying lines with different thickness doesn't seems to be the real solution, or is there a plugin to convert lines to "roads". I don't know the terminology but they should look like the maps from google maps.

Thanks

[Hans van der Maarel]

Hello Jakov,

You can still do that in Illustrator:
- Draw your lines through the road centers.
- Make them black.
- Duplicate that layer.
- Make the top layer white and slightly less wide.

Change color/width for major roads etc and you're basically there. Is it a large area that you'd be doing?

[Jakov Novotni]

Hello!
Thanks for the reply!

It is a smaller city I would be doing. 3x3km
I have read the tutorial about that method, it is really the easiest, only I am afraid how would it look like when printed on the 150 cm x 120 cm paper. The black line thickness would be around 10mm and white +1 mm and I am not sure if it would render correctly? Any experience with that?

[Hans van der Maarel]

Hello!
Thanks for the reply!

It is a smaller city I would be doing. 3x3km
I have read the tutorial about that method, it is really the easiest, only I am afraid how would it look like when printed on the 150 cm x 120 cm paper. The black line thickness would be around 10mm and white +1 mm and I am not sure if it would render correctly? Any experience with that?

Jakov,

You're looking at a scale of about 1:2.000, that's a very large scale. The method described here is not commonly used for that kind of scales, because it shows roads at a uniform thickness, whereas there is more than enough room to show the actual widths.

[Dennis McClendon]

Because Illustrator is vector-based, you will not have quality problems with the stacked (white line on wider black line) approach. The linework will render crisply at any resolution, and the two lines will align perfectly.

But, as Hans points out, at 1:2 000, it's more common to draw the kerblines individually than to "generate" them from representation of centerlines. It will seem odd for a 3-meter-wide lane to appear the same width as a six-lane motorway. You can, of course, use different line weights for different types of streets, but in European cities street widths are typically not uniform from one block to the next.

[Jakov Novotni]

Ah, yes, you are right!

The last 8 hours I am tracing buildings in AutoCAD and I plan to transfer it later to illustrator, but when I run out of buildings I guess I will stuck on other elements...
What is your advice on layer order

-Buildings
-Pavement
-Streets
-Greens
-Water

is this order right?

[Jimbo]

Ah, yes, you are right!

The last 8 hours I am tracing buildings in AutoCAD and I plan to transfer it later to illustrator, but when I run out of buildings I guess I will stuck on other elements...
What is your advice on layer order

-Buildings
-Pavement
-Streets
-Greens
-Water

is this order right?

One of the most major rules of cartography is to know that the order layering the data is to place:

text last but leaving it on top of all the layers
point
line
area, (polygons) come first but last in the layers list.

If you check out professionally made maps you can see that the data is layered accordingly to that order.

Water is an area, buildings can be both points & area depending on the data, although I would list them as points if it was a topographic project, what's pavement? Is it major roads? What's greens? Are you refering to parks?

[Dennis McClendon]

Some of this depends on local conditions. It may seem more natural for your city to see streets as lying on top of the ground, or it may seem more natural to see city blocks floating, with streets as the space in-between. A European city will typically be thought of as having streets in between buildings, while an American or Australian city will have buildings built in between the streets.

My large-scale map of downtown Chicago has this stacking order:

• labels
• building footprints
• water (sometimes occurs in parks and plazas, remember)
• walkways, plazas, driveways and parking areas
• lawns and grassy park areas
• blocks as
• closed polygons drawn along the kerblines

This means that the "default" condition of mapped areas is paved but not street, which is the case downtown, and takes care of alleys and parking aprons nicely. In a residential neighborhood, it would be more natural to have the default condition be grass, with paved areas on top of that.

This stacking order also requires various exceptions. For example, the river running through downtown must be shown as a series of short reaches, from bridge to bridge, rather than as a single body of water. The same is true (and more of a problem) for railway lines that are below street grade but not completely covered. The two blocks at either end of a bridge are joined as a dumbbell shape so the bridge can have sidewalks on it. I have to think of it as a planimetric drawing rather than a map with continuous features.

At a smaller scale, where streets have artificially abstract line weights, I find it more natural to have

• labels
• streets
• buildings
• water
• park
• ground

Since sidewalks are not shown, the edges of the parks and buildings are masked by the streets.

[natcase]

One of the most major rules of cartography is to know that the order layering the data is to place:

text last but leaving it on top of all the layers
point
line
area, (polygons) come first but last in the layers list.

If you check out professionally made maps you can see that the data is layered accordingly to that order.

Unless you have buildings that cross over streets. Or a tunnel under a park or water, represented by a transparent polygon. Or you want to use a polygon layer as a mask for a line layer (for example putting line-symbolized sidewalks under a polygon street). Sorry, I just flinch at rules like that...

At 1:2000, there's not likely to be much call for point data! (OK, go ahead and locate every fire hydrant...)

And ditto what Dennis said... For large scale maps I tend to go:

text
transparent building footprints over streets (often I just have a bridges et cetera layer)
streets
main building footprints
alleys/parking (I usually add a stroke to these)
pedestrian (I usually do not add a stroke to these, and use alleys/parking and streets to mask loose edges)
water
parkland/school campuses/other property-defined areas

[Jakov Novotni]

Thank you all very much for the help!

my map advances slowly, it is much more work than I thought it will be when I started. I will post the map for your review when it is finished