3 replies to this topic

[redsox11]

How would I go about importing a symbol, that I created in Illustrator, into ArcMap so that I can use it as a symbol to represent my data?

Any advice is welcome! Thanks!

[Hans van der Maarel]

How would I go about importing a symbol, that I created in Illustrator, into ArcMap so that I can use it as a symbol to represent my data?

Any advice is welcome! Thanks!

IIRC you can export as EMF or WMF from Illustrator, that can be imported into Arc.

[josie]

Hi redsox,

You can save it as a bmp file. If you then go to tools>styles>style manager and then select the file. If you need to scale your point symbol then you will need to this differently but this works as I have used it before. It is also possible to scale points styles (if you need info on this then just ask).

Try this link which I think explains it quite well:
http://www.esri.com/...iles/marker.pdf

You could also make a new font. This would mean you would need to export to true type font (not sure if you can do that in illustrator, i use corel draw for this). Then you could make a new xml file containing you new font character and bring it in this way.

Hope this helps

Josie

[DaveB]

I would recommend emf over bmp, especially if it's vector art. You can use either in picture marker symbols in ArcMap. Vector art emfs draw faster, don't look jaggy or pixelly if you scale them up a lot and you don't have to worry about the picture having a solid background in ArcMap.

Fonts are good if the symbol is a single color, or if it can be broken down into only a few (2 or 3) colors that can be exported as their own character.