managing paths in maps imported from GIS software

[Ed_Geis@adobeforums.com]

Hi,

I periodically receive maps from GIS gurus who export their maps from various ESRI software applications. I then edit them in Illustrator, primarily to make them look good aesthetically for publishing, but also to make them easier to read. When I manage to successfully open and save these maps in Illustrator (which can be tricky), I often find that the paths are extraordinarily complex with a huge amount of points on them. This makes the file cumbersome to work with. What's worse, the paths are often composed of many separate segments, which makes editing a pain.

Example: I recently edited a map of the Maine coast for a process-color publication (for those of you that aren't familiar with it, this stretch of coast is extremely complex with hundreds of islands). When I opened the original GIS map in Illustrator, I found that the line delineating the mainland shore was composed of dozens of segments, each of which contained many dozens of points (a lot of these points are superfluous--they're literally adjacent to each other).

When I tried to join all these path segments (very tedious) I found to my surprise that there came a limit--next time I opened the file they would be back to segments (and sometimes AI would even crash when the path got too long and complex).

I worked around it because I had a deadline, but it was extremely time-consuming. There must be a better way.

Has anybody experienced this problem? Any solutions? The root of the problem seems to be these overly-complex paths.

Thanks.

[Kurt_Gold@adobeforums.com]

Maybe this action will help you:

-> <http://digbig.com/4bbrs>

If not, a better choice would be buying 'Concatenate':

-> <http://personalpages.tds.net/~graffix/software/plugins.html#concatenate>

[davidwa@adobeforums.com]

Try MAPublisher....it lets you join and simplify arcs.

[sam_m_brown@adobeforums.com]

Map Publisher will also let you take Esri Shape files into Illy and keep the attributes and geo-referencing.

[Martin_Gamache@adobeforums.com]

There are numerous line generalizing algorithms that can be run in the ESRI packages before exporting that will reduce the number of points. Problem is they are not necessarily out of the box solutions and most folks dont appreciate how useful cartographic generalization is for legibility. A light touch of Illustrator's own Object>Path>Simplify can also help a bit.

mg