7 replies to this topic

[jerseysbest]

I'm doing a map for one of my classes; I download a PDF and opened it in Illustrator, but all the highways are made up of a few thousand segments. I need to symbolize a lot of the highways differently so selecting them is quit a tedious task.

I guess the PDF was exported from Arc cause I've run into this before, but that time the highways could be drawn the same and I could just select the highways I needed throught Arc.

Is there any way to select by attributes in Illustrator or something so I don't have to spend a lot of time getting the data organized?

[Martin Gamache]

Run Rick Johnson's concatenate plug-in within Illustrator or go back to the Shapefile and dissolve your line segments and simplify them before exporting from the GIS.

[jerseysbest]

Yeah, if i had the shape file, I'd probably dissolve them, but I'm working with a PDF file I downloaded. Thanks for the tip about the plug-in, definitely cool, wish I knew about it before.

[Matthew Hampton]

You can select by stroke weight or stroke color. If they all came across the same stroke/color then you are in tough shape.

The lines need to be classified by whatever attribute and given either a different stoke weight or color in Arc before exporting to PDF. You'll still end-up with many little segments - but at least you'll be able to separate them and give them their respective symbols.

[jerseysbest]

How do I select by stroke weight in Illustrator?

[Matthew Hampton]

Select -> Same -> Stroke Weight

[jerseysbest]

Beautiful! Thanks so much! I've only been using Illustrator a few months, still learning...

[Matthew Hampton]

I've only been using Illustrator a few months, still learning...

You have to start sometime - good luck!