5 replies to this topic

[fcullen]

Hi, I am new to this forum and am hoping somebody might be able to shed some light on my question. I am wondering if it is possible to use data from an Excel spreadsheet in order to manipulate a map drawn in IIllustrator 9.0. I have seen how software such as Mapland can be used directly with Excel in order to make specific changes to maps such as shading, pinpointing cities, marking borders etc.
Is it possible to do something similar using Excel with Illustrator? If yes, perhaps somebody might be able to explain how. If no, well then at least I know I am looking for something that is not possible and I can therefore look at alternative solutions.
Many thanks for your anticipated help.
Frank.

[Dennis McClendon]

So far as I know, no. This has always seemed like a real gap in the market to me, that we don't have any software that can link vector-drawn objects to attribute tables.

There are a few things that come close. MAPublisher allows you to create attribute data for Illustrator objects, but I think it's rather slow and painful to do that from scratch.* If you want to work from a standard basemap, such as US counties or countries of the world, have a look at MagicMaps. If you haven't drawn anything yet, check the capabilities of Ortelius.

*I want a way to click on my Illustrator object and then click on the line in the attribute table that should apply to that object.

[cartdeco]

Frank,

MAPublisher can import Excel tables directly if they have lat/long co-ords in them and can also join an Excel table to existing map data. A good example would be using the Natural Earth world data set and joining an Excel table from data.un.org. You can quickly an easily create a choropleth map.

[Dennis McClendon]

But that's about manipulating a map that's already in shapefile format. For those of us who've invested lots of time in drawing nice-looking Illustrator maps, there's no easy way to attribute those lines and polygons.

[cartdeco]

Hi Dennis,

You can still attribute your nice Illustrator maps. The new georeferencer in MAPublisher will allow you to give your artwork a spatial reference. Once that has been achieved you can create your own feature classes and attributes to your heart's content. Once completed in Illustrator you can then export your 'data' to Esri shapefile format or MapInfo tab format to share with others using a GIS.

If you have any further questions just let me know.

Cheers,

[R. Gosselin]

Hi Denis,

I don't know if this is close to what you are looking for, but CodeTopo make a direct link between data/attributes and vector-drawn objects appearance.

CodeTopo doesn't work with Excel spreadsheet (except in .tab or .txt format) but it works as an Excel spreadsheet from wich you could obtain maps just by making a link between the code of the objects and their attributes.

If you have some times, the best is to take a look at:

http://rg75.free.fr/...codetopo.en.htm

Regards,

renaud

So far as I know, no. This has always seemed like a real gap in the market to me, that we don't have any software that can link vector-drawn objects to attribute tables.

There are a few things that come close. MAPublisher allows you to create attribute data for Illustrator objects, but I think it's rather slow and painful to do that from scratch.* If you want to work from a standard basemap, such as US counties or countries of the world, have a look at MagicMaps. If you haven't drawn anything yet, check the capabilities of Ortelius.

*I want a way to click on my Illustrator object and then click on the line in the attribute table that should apply to that object.