importing street map information

**Albacore** · 29 August 2007, 03:10 PM

I am sorry to say when I buy OS (Ordinance Survey) in the UK it is much easier to use Illustrator as all the lines & streets are held together with clipping masks and compound paths which makes it mush easier either to release and expand. Then areas on the map like streets or house you then can use the pathfinder to join, merge, trim, crop or mix allowing you to quickly build an area of the map for other uses. I have found even in the new version of the PDF filter in XPro to easily get confused with text as OS does not turn these to shapes but leaves them so you can edit but what happens in Xpro that all the text runs down the side of the drawing. Even in Illy you get text with spaces that you can't get rid of but at least you know where they should be.

When it is a simple drawing I use John's method building up the map in Layers and one tip I suggest that you use is to draw the road or street as a line first. Then once all the streets are done convert them to shape using "ctrl+1" to combine then you can tidy it up with the shape editor. The drawing shown here was done for a local town plan development in Argyll & Bute in Scotland

**Jon G** · 29 August 2007, 03:57 PM

Illustrator doesn't fare any better with the maps in question, the problem is in the source file.

Xara is much faster opening the file and handling the objects, though.

**cubswinn** · 03 September 2007, 02:38 PM

i think i have a handle on the project (see attachment if you'd like). thanks egg b and others for your input.
cubswinn

**raynerj1** · 03 September 2007, 05:23 PM

I wouldn't use a scale on the map unless you are positive of the scale. I usually leave a scale out of my map drawings for that very reason.

**Egg Bramhill** · 04 September 2007, 12:49 AM

cubswinn, great to see you sorted it out. It's just such a a shame to see such dirty vectors.
Your original in red (note the number of nodes and the jiggy/joggy line in red compared to an Xtreme vector in blue with smooth lines and 4 nodes.

**raynerj1** · 04 September 2007, 01:40 AM

My goodness egg... Now that you mention I did go back and check his lines... I bet he drew them with the freehand tool... That would have taken twice as long as the shape editor... Just click and bend to shape...

**cubswinn** · 04 September 2007, 02:32 AM

egg and John,
I certainly see your point, but egg, as you know the line wasn't drawn with the freehand it was imported. Therefore as I understand it can't be smoothed with the FreeHand tool. Egg, in your example did you just smooth the line manually? Or are you suggesting just drawing new highways etc. over the imported file as if I were just tracing a bitmap.

**Odat** · 04 September 2007, 05:18 AM

You should be able to smooth shapes even if you imported them or if you drew them with a different smoothing level and then changed your mind.

If you select an item and then use the shape editor, you'll notice that there is a smoothing slider in the toolbar. Drag-select to select the nodes in the part of the shape that you want smoothed, and then you can use the slider to adjust the smoothing, which takes out any extra nodes that you might not want.

Egg made a video tutorial to help me with a different problem a while ago that touches on this as well (http://youtube.com/watch?v=VjNWU5P-F88)

**handrawn** · 04 September 2007, 06:30 AM

it all very much depends - heres a pdf import of an inkscape vector shape - I can adjust the slider in xara freehand tool, but as far as I can see it has no effect whatsoever

**steve.ledger** · 04 September 2007, 06:40 AM

I can reduce the nodes on your nose easily (as strange as that sounds !)

When you select the object and choose the freehand tool, are you then dragging a selection rectangle over the node area you want to reduce/smooth?
Once the nodes are selected - the reduction slider certainly has the desired effect (see top right image for result)