14 replies to this topic

[Giggles]

Hi guys,

How can you combine different paths with different strokes to achieve the road cartographic effect seen in the attachment? I use Illustrator CS4.

Attached Files

•  GrandTetonNP_closeup.gif   337.97K   166 downloads

[razornole]

Hi guys,

How can you combine different paths with different strokes to achieve the road cartographic effect seen in the attachment? I use Illustrator CS4.

You can use two different stroke widths if you want to keep you path attributes, or you can outline your path. I usually don't outline my path until one of the last steps, and if I do I always keep a the original path on a layer that is turned off in case I need to make adjustments.

kru

[rudy]

Hi guys,

How can you combine different paths with different strokes to achieve the road cartographic effect seen in the attachment? I use Illustrator CS4.

You can use two different stroke widths if you want to keep you path attributes, or you can outline your path. I usually don't outline my path until one of the last steps, and if I do I always keep a the original path on a layer that is turned off in case I need to make adjustments.

kru

Or, if you don't want to use attributes, copy the roads layer to another layer. Create a thicker outline for the lower layer and a thinner one for the upper layer.

[Adam Wilbert]

Hi,

It's all in the Appearance Panel in Illustrator, which is one of those panels that really should be turned on by default because it is so fundamental to how Illustrator operates, but it's not, so its easy to not know how powerful it is. In the Appearance panel, you can add additional strokes and fills to any object and control their properties individually. So for the road casing, start with your base style, then click the Add New Stroke button and that will create a 2nd stroke above the first in the stacking order for that object.

 appearance.png   35.7K   72 downloads

[Matthew Hampton]

ESRI has made it more convenient to arrive at this look and feel as well using the Symbol Property Editor.

 2012_03_22_0844.png   35.36K   52 downloads


Using the Symbol Levels dialog you can modify how the different lines interact with each other.

 2012_03_22_0846.png   22.68K   41 downloads
 2012_03_22_0846_001.png   3.25K   43 downloads

FWIW - The line styles depicted above are only used for demonstration purposes and do not indicate the final line styles used on any map.

[Adam Wilbert]

ESRI has made it more convenient to arrive at this look and feel as well using the Symbol Property Editor.

Matthew,

Does ESRI's approach export cleanly to Illustrator as multiple strokes, or do you wind up with a separate object for each line style?

[Giggles]

Thanks for the responses. Adam, I should have been clearer with my question. I understand how to do a basic road casing using the appearance panel. What I want to replicate is the Join and Merge effect seen in Matthew's posting above. How can that be achieved in Illustrator when i have road casings with different stroke widths and colors so that the paths are "flowing" without interruptions ....as seen in the example in my first post.

[Charles Syrett]

From what I understand of your question, the solution is simply in the stacking order of the layers. Let's assume you have 3 street classifications: arterials, collectors, and local streets.

1. Assign a graphic style and a layer for the casings of each.
2. Assign a graphic style and a layer for the fills of each.
3. Arrange the layers in this order, top to bottom:
Arterial fills
Collector fills
Street fills
Arterial casings
Collector casings
Street casings
4. Create all of your linework (draw, or else edit imported data) on the casing layers, using the casing styles.
5. Duplicate the contents of each layer in turn and send to its equivalent fill layer.
6. Assign the fill styles to the fill layers.

This is the basic process for double line street maps. It gets much more interesting when you have to do complex interchanges!

Did I understand your question correctly? Does this help?

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Thanks for the responses. Adam, I should have been clearer with my question. I understand how to do a basic road casing using the appearance panel. What I want to replicate is the Join and Merge effect seen in Matthew's posting above. How can that be achieved in Illustrator when i have road casings with different stroke widths and colors so that the paths are "flowing" without interruptions ....as seen in the example in my first post.

[frax]

Regarding the appearance panel - you get different results if you apply appearances on a group/composite path vs on individual strokes. Do some experimentation!

[Giggles]

From what I understand of your question, the solution is simply in the stacking order of the layers. Let's assume you have 3 street classifications: arterials, collectors, and local streets.

1. Assign a graphic style and a layer for the casings of each.
2. Assign a graphic style and a layer for the fills of each.
3. Arrange the layers in this order, top to bottom:
Arterial fills
Collector fills
Street fills
Arterial casings
Collector casings
Street casings
4. Create all of your linework (draw, or else edit imported data) on the casing layers, using the casing styles.
5. Duplicate the contents of each layer in turn and send to its equivalent fill layer.
6. Assign the fill styles to the fill layers.

This is the basic process for double line street maps. It gets much more interesting when you have to do complex interchanges!

Did I understand your question correctly? Does this help?

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

Thanks for the responses. Adam, I should have been clearer with my question. I understand how to do a basic road casing using the appearance panel. What I want to replicate is the Join and Merge effect seen in Matthew's posting above. How can that be achieved in Illustrator when i have road casings with different stroke widths and colors so that the paths are "flowing" without interruptions ....as seen in the example in my first post.

Charles,

Many, many, many thanks for your help. That is exactly what I am looking for. Very helpful post. Cheers and many thanks to everyone that helped.

[Kimi]

You might find this article interesting :-)

http://www.avenza.co...ion-mapublisher

The example on the blog uses dashed style.. When you use the straight line for the second stroke (the one on top of the other stroke), this technique will work if one line crosses to another line.

Happy Mapping!
Kimi

[Adam Wilbert]

Regarding the appearance panel - you get different results if you apply appearances on a group/composite path vs on individual strokes. Do some experimentation!

Not just the appearance, but effects too. For instance, adding the Outline Stroke effect to a subgroup, then applying a stroke to the main group will keep road casings the same regardless of how wide the actual road lines are. In other words, it makes it possible to have a 1pt casing on a 2pt road, and the same 1pt casing on a 3pt road. Without Outline Stroke, it would appear to be 1pt on 2, and .5pt on 3.

Charles' method is great too, but the downside is that it duplicates (and sometimes triplicates) all of your road line work, which makes editing more difficult. Either way though, I'd agree that interchanges are... exciting.

[Charles Syrett]

Charles' method is great too, but the downside is that it duplicates (and sometimes triplicates) all of your road line work, which makes editing more difficult. Either way though, I'd agree that interchanges are... exciting.

For editing, I usually just eliminate all the fills, edit the casings, and then remake the fills. The duplicating process (called "cloning" in FreeHand – just select, command-equals, click on target layer – bang, done) takes seconds.

Yes, interchanges. I like to create special bridge layers. Clone a street casing, send to the bridge layer, trim to just the extent of the bridge, then create a fill from the trimmed casing and keep it on the same layer. Smoothly merging ramps are fun too. A carefully drawn interchange with all the bridges can bring one's work into another class, like the details of a nicely-tailored suit.

Charles Syrett
Map Graphics
http://www.mapgraphics.com

[cartdeco]

An alternate way is to apply a graphic style to all your features on the line layer for the base element, e.g. a red casement at 2 pt. Create a new graphic style for the internal stroke, say yellow at 1 pt. Select all features on the layer using the target button on the layers panel, which will apply a graphic style to the layer, and apply the yellow internal stroke to the layer.

Now all features on the layer have a nice join, with no artifacts or overlaps and you haven't replicated any data.

You will need to take care of the stacking order of layers, and the style you choose for the internal stroke, if there are many classes of roads.

[tofufriend]

I've just tried it on my map using Illustrator CS5.. Works!!! Thanks Mr. Adam Wilbert Sir!

Regarding the appearance panel - you get different results if you apply appearances on a group/composite path vs on individual strokes. Do some experimentation!

Not just the appearance, but effects too. For instance, adding the Outline Stroke effect to a subgroup, then applying a stroke to the main group will keep road casings the same regardless of how wide the actual road lines are. In other words, it makes it possible to have a 1pt casing on a 2pt road, and the same 1pt casing on a 3pt road. Without Outline Stroke, it would appear to be 1pt on 2, and .5pt on 3.

Charles' method is great too, but the downside is that it duplicates (and sometimes triplicates) all of your road line work, which makes editing more difficult. Either way though, I'd agree that interchanges are... exciting.