Exercise 1: Touch Up GIS/ AutoCAD Drawings

This exercise will teach you how to produce results like this map.

Select, Scale, Ungroup
Tools, Alter, Color, Line Weight
Adding and Changing Color Quickly
Import Icon on New Layer

You will be using Glenoce.ai and busicon.ai files in the below exercises. You may also import drawings located in symbols.ai.

 

Select, Scale, Ungroup

Working with a Document

When we create a GIS map or a map in AutoCAD, often the map might need enhancement or we need to add other images to the map. This can easily be accomplished in Illustrator.

1. Open Glencoe.ai from the Adobe Illustrator images file provided

2. Make sure you are viewing your layers palette, Choose Window/Layers

3. You should see 3 layers. Select the base layer drawing in the center of the document. This drawing has been placed in this document for you. You will notice the drawing is one big object and too small for the paper.

4. When you select the drawing,by using the black arrow and dragging over the drawing, you notice a bounding box and small squares around the edge of this bounding box. Your cursor turns to double sided arrows when you roll over the edge of the box. Holding shift and dragging the box will scale the drawing proportionately. You may also choose Window/ Transform to scale according to measurements. Scale it as large as you like.

5. Now we need to ungroup the drawing so that we may select individual closed objects. While the drawing is selected, choose Object/ Ungroup once. This ungroups all the objects and frees individually grouped objects. If you keep selecting ungroup, you will break the document down into individual lines and have to select and group lines to get back to this point.

6. Select any white space in the artboard space to unselect the drawing. Select entities within the drawing by left clicking within the drawing.

Tools, Alter, Color, Line Weight

Tools

Choose Window/Tools for your tool options. Rolling over each tool tells you what the tool is. We will be using the top 2 arrows in the following segment.

1. The left arrow, the black arrow, is the select arrow. It enables you to select grouped objects in order to move or color. The right arrow, the white arrow, enables you to change individual points within a grouped object. Select the black arrow and then select a building footprint within the drawing.

2. You will see a bounding box around the footprint. You may scale the object or by moving the cursor into the corner watching for the arrow to shift to a shorter single arrow, you may move the object to a different place. Try doing both.

Alter

3. Select another footprint with the white arrow and notice the points defining the object. The points should be hollow like the drawing below. If they are not, deselect and select again.

4. With the white arrow still selected, you may now select individual points and alter the footprint by selecting the point, and using the arrow keys on the keyboard or dragging to point left, right, up or down. If you break the footprint apart, don't worry you can make it a whole object with the pen tool later.

Color

5. Switch back to the black arrow and select another closed object. With the object selected, choose Window/Color if you don't already see you color palette. Select the arrow in the top right hand corner of the palette, from the drop down list choose RGB color. Adjust the sliders back and forth until you have a color you desire. By default, the outline of the footprint will change color, you will select the white box with a red slash through it in the color palette (which means the color is empty) to fill the inside of the footprint.

Line Weight

6. To change the line thickness around the edge of the footprint, choose Window/Stroke. Select the desired object to change, under Weight, adjust the desired thickness by either selecting from the drop down menu, using the arrow keys up and down, or typing into the text box.

 

Adding and Changing Color Quickly

Adding Color to Multiple Objects

1. Select many footprints at once by holding down the shift key and selecting the objects. When you have selected a bunch of them, return to the color palette. Select RGB or CMYK from the arrow drop down list, choose a desired color for the border.

2. Switch to the square behind the border in the color palette and choose a fill color. All of the selected objects changes simultaneously.

3. Deselect all of the object by clicking on on white space within the work area. Select a plain footprint that has not been altered with color. Choose the eyedropper in the Tools palette (the 10th one down on the left).

4. Place the eyedropper inside a footprint with color while the plain footprint is selected. Your plain footprint will adopt the colors of the example when using the eyedropper.

Import Icon on New Layer

Using Additional Files

Finally, we will place a bus icon on the map.You will import the file, scale it, and place it on a new layer.

1. In the Layer palette, (Window/Layers) choose the top right arrow, from the drop down list select New Layer. A pop up window will ask you what to name it. In this box, make sure Show, Print, and Preview are checked. Select OK.

2. Move the layer by moving the curser to the new layer, highlighted blue, and left click dragging it to the top of the layers. If it falls into the title layer, select it and drag it to the top.

3. Your layer order in the Layer palette mirrors the layer order in the document. If you change the order of the layers, some objects might be hidden or hard to select because they are underneath other objects above them in the layer order. If you place too many objects on the same layer, you may have a difficult time. You can always choose Object/Arrange if you want to move objects on the same layer to the front or back.

4. Select the icon layer and deselect any objects on the page.

5. Choose File/Open, select Busicon.ai from the Adobe Illustrator images file provided. This document will open while keeping Glencoe open as well.

6. Move the icon document, by dragging the top blue bar where the name appears, so that you can see the Glencoe document. Drag the bus icon into the Glencoe document. It should appear on the icon layer of the Glencoe document.

7. Scale the icon by holding shift and dragging from the bounding box. Move to desired location.

You are ready to Draw from Photographs. Continue to Exercise 2.