9 replies to this topic

[Nick Springer]

A must-have tool for catographers using Illustrator is the Concatenate Plug-in from Rick Johnson/Graffix. This tool allows you to select a whole group of line segments and connect any overlapping endpoints. Since many GIS packages export to Illustrator, but break lines into individual link segments, this tool is invaluable.

TIP: In your GIS application make the lines on each layer a different color and then in Illustrator you can select one line segment and choose Select > Same > Stroke Color to select a set of lines to Concatenate.

[Kartograph]

Great Tool !
Thank You !

This solves most of my problems with cutting and joining I talked about in another post. I´m wondering why adobe doesn´t add this functionality to the standard program.

Regards,

Andreas

[Nick Springer]

...and I didn't even see your post before I wrote this one...

[Adam Wilbert]

Reviving an old thread... I just wanted to throw this out there and see if the concatenate plugin is still the way to go for joining broken line segments exported from a GIS package. Are there other, newer, better options in 2007 that I should know about?

[Martin Gamache]

In case you missed it at NACIS

All things Scripts and plug-ins:

http://www.kelsocart...hy.com/scripts/
http://www.phantasmc...ks/plugins.html

But to answer your original question, it is still the best way.

[pfyfield]

Question before I try this plugin-

In the case where three lines meet at one point, does it end all those lines there, or does it join two of them and only put an end vertex on one?
In other words, is it better than my current method, which is to export back to shapefile and dissolve in ArcMap?
I used to do this with the "join lines" filter in MAPublisher, but I haven't gotten that to work since version 5 or so.

[Nick Springer]

Concatenate picks 2 of the points and connects them. I haven't done any tests to see if it has any logic to try and pick the 2 that have the closest matching angles.

[Jimbo]

Can you get this plugin in Adobe Freehand? I haven't used any of these packages in a long time or in the case of Freehand never although I will soon be training for it so please forgive me.

[pfyfield]

Looks like it's Mac only. Oh well. It would have been a real time saver. It's tough to install software on a government computer anyway- it has to be tested for compatibility.

Does anybody use the MAPUblisher "join lines" filter to do the same thing? I swear it used to do this (join two end points where three meet), but now it won't.

[Nick Springer]

Concatenate works on Windows too. That's what platform I use it on.