October 09, 2004
Curious George: Vector maps?
Are there any sources for free vector form (Adobe Illustrator, Postscript, etc) maps that I can use for quick personal projects? I have been looking through Google and can only find companies selling the files at ridiculous prices. Am I screwed?
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Not sure if this is what your requesting but deviant art has a thread on free vectoring programs
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I can't think of any free sources (that aren't GIS data) off-hand but you can find a lot maps online in PDF format. So, one option is find a map that you like in PDF and open it in Illustrator. You'll probably have to edit it a lot to get just the shapes you want but this should work. You could also download ESRI's free ArcReader, find shapefiles for the area you're interested in and print the map to a PDF which you can then edit in Illustrator.
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P.S. You can get many free base map layers (counties, etc.) from the USGS. You want the shapefiles for use in ArcReader.
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There are a few over at the Open Clip Art Gallery in SVG format.
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I exported a lot of .shp files from Arcview to Illustrator and from there to Flash. Seemed to work. Some cleanup needed.
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My bad. You want ArcExplorer not ArcReader. So, open a shapefile in ArcExplorer, print to PDF (or PostScript), open in Illustrator. I tried this (printing to PDF not PS) and it worked. There's tons of free base GIS data out there. Sorry for the multiple posts.
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Aghhhhhh... I lied. ArcExplorer does some nasty rasterizing when you try to print. I'm going to go crawl in hole now.
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I'm far too lazy to actually search for you, but if you search for pdf maps from public (eg government) organizations, you'll get a ton of high-quality maps that are at least plausibly free. And if you promise to manipulate them so that it's impossible to tell where they came from... well, i won't rat on you anyway. I think copyright law allows for that sort of thing.
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Good point about the PDF maps... thanks. I know that Adobe Illustrator does import them.