
Best results when all GIS shapefiles are already in the same projection. I recommend doing this in the same import session, or before you rescale the maps. Use MaPublisher to import other GIS layers (roads, polling locations, etc.) and they will land directly on top of the thematic symbols.
Flash can now be instructed via ActionScript coding to independently control a symbols fill and whether or not it is “highlighted” with a stroke. Two groups of symbols are imported.One group’s symbols will be named something like “precinct234” and the other group’s corresponding symbols will be named “precinct234Stroke” Give the new polygons a stoke and no fill, and rename them using Steps 3-6 except append the naming scheme with “Stroke”. In Illustrator after you’ve used MaPublisher to name all your polygons appropriately, duplicate the layer and hide/lock the original layer. To have a seperate stroke layer on polygons so the fills can be color coded seperately from the strokes (which would always maintain the same stroke color) you’ll need to make a 2nd copy of the symbols: Verify the name changes in the Layers panel.
Note: the & symbol is used to concatenate (add together) the string values in each attribute column.
Find the expression field in the same dialog and type out “a&PRECINCT” (where “a” is the “a” attribute column name and PRECINCT is the attribute column name). Make sure the Type is string and enter “a” for the value (the derive value button must be unchecked to see this option). Click the Add button in the Edit Schema window in MaPublisher’s Illustrator panel. A little cloogy but better than the alternative. You can edit the schema to add a letter in front of each name and then use actionscript to do the same to each item in your XML file. Flash is picky about some other characters starting off the name, too, so when in doubt, use the following solution. Some GIS shapefiles have category names that begin with numbers, which Flash doesn’t like. Use the Properties panel to verify this.īoth Ken and I have used this process on multiple shapefiles with hundreds of objects and it’s worked like a dream. All you symbol instances will be named the same as their parent movieClip libary item. Under “Commands” in the top menu, select “Instance_setMcName.”. Use Edit > Select All to select all your map object symbols on the stage. In the Library panel, select all the MovieClips in the Illustrator Import sub-folder and drag them up and out of the folders to the top level. The map will be imported both onto the stage and each map object will be added to the document’s Library. Road names in mapublisher movie#
In the Import dialog box, select all the sublayers and check the box named “Create movie clip” and hit OK. Open Flash and import the AI file to the stage (File > Import). Watch as your individual path objects are named in the Layers panel then save the file. In the resulting dialog’s text entry field, type in the name of the field you want to use to name the individual polygons (county, precinct, etc.). Check the box marked “Derive value from expression”. Select the #Name (usually selected by default) in the list of columns. In your MapAttributes panel, use the flyout menu to select Edit Schema. Open the MapAttributes panel by going to View > MaPublisher > MapAttributes. Edit > Select All the imported map path objects. Open your GIS shapefile in Illustrator via the MaPublisher plugin (File > Import Map Data). Shapefile prep work in ArcMap as needed. Run the script to take the movieclip names and apply them to instances. Use MaPublisher to name each map object’s GIS database attribute to name itself. Each geographic feature imports as it’s own path object in illustrator, visible in the Layers panel when it is set to not just show top level layers. Import the shapefile (.shp) in Illustrator using MaPublisher. Shapefile prep work in ArcMap GIS as needed.