7 replies to this topic

[Kartograph]

How does everybody do their diagrams ? Most statistics and calc software produce mediocre quality diagrams, so most of the time I redraw them with vector software to match the map style. Is there a better way ? Maybe exporting the diagram into Illustrator ? or does anybody know a solution which automatically produces good ones and has good layout capabilities ?
When reading Tufte and so forth, I´m always wondering how to do it all in short time.

Regards,

Andreas

[Nick Springer]

If it is complex data, I usually do the analysis in Excel and create the basic graph shapes and the copy and paste to Adobe Illustrator, but you loose the data connection.

If it is simple data Illustrator's graphic tool isn't too bad and you can fully modify the design while maintaining the connection to the data for later updates.

[Kartograph]

Thanks for your answer !

O.K. Now I got me Illustrator, seems to be better than Freehand regarding im- and exports. Funny thing ist, that the AIllustrator SVG export is not so good... Adobe developed SVG . I use Corel, because it IDs every item, nice thing if you have to script things. But being able to import shapes is so much better. Actually I don´t even know how to do it in Freehand. Once I circumnavigated it by first exporting to dxf and so on, but that didn´t look any good.
Which were the other reasons you switched ? Back here in Germany, most people use Freehand or a construction program.

InfoGraphics: S-Plus seems to have very nice diagrams even some uncommon ones. Does anybody know if it is worth a look ? Or how the grphics export works ?

[Kartograph]

Boy ! Illustrator IS awesome !

I played around with it this weekend, it´s great ! So many functions for example the 3D functions are great. All the stuff I always dreamed about is there. I really don´t understand why they don´t shows us about Illustrator at the University.
Does anybody know where to find good tutorials ? There are many cartographic tutorials for freehand on german university sites, but none for AI. english language is OK. My google search wasn´t vcery succesful.

Regards,

Andreas

[Hans van der Maarel]

As far as I know there aren't any cartographic tutorials for Illustrator online. I've been walking around with the idea of writing up a few, sort of a preview of the training course I do, but they'd focus more on MAPublisher and only feature Illustrator as a vehicle for that.

However, there is a tips & tricks section here on this board, where there's a few Illustrator things already. I think we should just start adding to that.

[Nick Springer]

My goal is to get a lot more Illustrator (and other) tutorials added to this site. I have been too busy to think about it a whole lot, but I will make an effort to add some more.

Kartograph, maybe you (and others) could give me some ideas about any specific topics you would like covered first.

[Kartograph]

Today I wanted to make a map of europe with overlapping boundaries of the distribution of different kinds of oak trees. I digitized the coastline and had big problems at first with cutting and after I found the scissors, with joining. I tried a lot, but the way I did it wasn´t very effective. In Freehand I just selected the two paths to be joined, CTRL-J for joining the paths and then a click on the object inspector to close the graph.
Now in AI I hand selected the last nodes and CTRL-Jed. But most of the time that wouldn´t work. As AI also fills non-closed paths I just connected them by the object menu, but that felt somehow incorrect and was also very uncomfortable.
To put it in a nutshell:

A introduction to cutting and joining paths e.g. to attach a boundary to the mapedge or to copy and cut paths to rearrange them for political entities would be nice. Or just tell me how to do it, and I can make a short tutrial., if your time is scarce .

A tutorial on making good looking pattern fillings. I tried it today and it looked terrible . I tried it the FH way, drawing outside of the map and dragging it into the Colour menu.
But I couldn´t change the direction of the pattern or the colour or thickness etc.

A tutorial on making good isometric style maps, e.g. city map with 3D looking important landmarks.

I´m happy with the other stuff, quite intuitive.

Regards,

Andreas / Kartograph

[Nick Springer]

As Kartograph discovered I just answered this in another posting before I saw this one.