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From the Style Inspector, you can add a wide variety of components to create custom styles.

When a style is unlocked, Style Components are accessed in the Expert pane in the Style Inspector. Use Style components to add different stroke types, a variety of fills, and adornment to add various effects to your fills and strokes. You can easily see how flexible Ortelius is for creating new and interesting styles.

Note, to edit a style component it must be enabled (check box). Disabled components can neither be edited, nor show up when the style is used to draw an object.

Individual components of a style can be uniquely named by double-clicking in the master list of the Style Inspector. Naming components helps the user recognize what each component contributes.

In the Style Inspector, the following properties can be edited for strokes: color, width, dashes, cap and join, clipping, offset, and shadow.

An Arrowed Stroke component is easily customizable. Color, line width, and dash properties are set in the same way as a standard stroke. Linear, diameter, radius, and angle dimension settings are available.

Set the arrowhead size by dragging the knob (small square) In the arrow preview area.

The Arrowed Stroke is highly flexible in that you can set arrow head style on one or both ends, and add dimensions along the stroke. Choose from these options for styling the ends of Arrowed Strokes.

Occasionally, you may want your work to have a roughened appearance. With the Rough Stroke, you can easily mimic pencil lines or apply color and transparency to mimic markers or even watercolor. Adjust roughness properties in the Style Inspector.

The Tagged Stroke offers an amazing flexibility for easily creating strokes with “tags” or hatches. Properties include options to define the type of tag, including lines, squares, triangles, semi-circles, circles and “v”s. Color, size, and spacing can be set, as well as the option to show or hide the main stroke and taper the tags at either end of the stroke.

One of the beautiful things about classic hand-drawn maps is their gracefully tapering rivers and streams. This is a difficult effect to achieve with today’s vector mapping applications. Ortelius’ Tapered Stroke supplies an elegant way to form styles for such linear features. Options include tapering at one or both ends, as well as setting color, off-set, and stroke width.

The Zig-Zag Stroke adds settings for the amplitude, wavelength, and spread of the zig-zag. Color, line width, and dash are set in the same way as a standard stroke.

Add objects, symbols, or images repeatedly along a path using Path Decorator. For example, draw a circle on the drawing canvas and copy it. Paste it into the image well under Path Decorator. The circle is now added at regular intervals along the path and its scale, spacing, lead-in, end-ramp, off-set, alternating offset, and clipping can be defined.

Gradient fill settings are available for linear and radial gradients. To set gradient colors, select the color-wells at each end of the gradient bar to open the Colors panel. Select colors and set opacity. Add and remove color stops using the “+” and “-” on the left side of the gradient bar. Drag color stops to position along the gradient bar.

The angle of the gradient can be set precisely, and the angle can be set relative to the object or relative to the page.

The color fill component lets you select the color well and choose from millions of colors using the Colors panel. From the Colors panel, transparency can also be set using the Opacity Slider (see Using the Colors Panel for more information).

Fill objects by tiling images using the Paste Image command (pastes from clipboard) or use Image File to add an image from a file. Images can also be dragged-and dropped from the Image Browser into the image-well.

Shadows can be applied to fill components by checking the Shadow option and setting the shadow color, angle, distance, and blur.

Zig-zag fills can be useful for defining styles for unusual shapes. The amplitude, wavelength, and spread are adjustable in the Style Inspector.

Using the Pattern Fill, objects, symbols, or images are regularly repeated within the fill area. Draw an object or add a symbol to your drawing canvas and copy it. Next, paste it by clicking Paste Image in the Style Inspector. Last, set the scale, spacing, alternating offset, and angle.

Pattern fills now expose random spacing, random scale, and random angle properties allowing more stochastic pattern effects to be realized.

When a new area is drawn using a pattern fill style, the image objects in the pattern may appear clipped at the edges of the shape. You can use “Suppress clipped images” to hide images at the edge of a shape if they would otherwise appear as clipped.

Hatch fill is used to create patterns of lines. This component offers control over line width, spacing, lead-in, color, and angle. Lines can be dashed, and roughness and wobble can even be added to create a wavy pattern. Add two or more Hatch Fill components with differing angles to create grid patterns.

A Text Adornment enables a string of text to be associated with a particular style. Layout, vertical position, text wrap, angle, font, color, outline, and mask can be defined. Use “Variable” position and the slider bar for just-right positioning of vertical alignment.

Text Adornments can be a constant string of text, free text associated with a label, or text associated with an intelligent labels. Text adornments can be applied to any style. When enabled, the text adornment will always appear when the style is used. When disabled, they will not be directly drawn but may still be used as templates for labels.

Use the following options for defining text adornments:

Constant Text Adornment – In the Text content area, enter a word, number, or text string into the text-well to make the text always appear with an object when the style is used. For example, a style for a forest area can always contain a text adornment “Forest” by including the word “Forest” in the text-well.

Intelligent Text Adornments – When the text-well contains an %%identifier string, a text adornment based on the tagged attributes will be applied. For example, a drawing layer containing river features may have attribute information “Name” indicating the names of the rivers (this is common with Shapefile map data). When the identifier %%Name is entered in the text-well, a text adornment with the river name will always be applied to all features. If no attribute exists, the text will show the default placeholder string: “Text Adornment.” This lets you know that the adornment or an attribute of the object needs to edited appropriately.

Free Text and Intelligent Labels – Use the method described above for adding Intelligent Text Adornments, then disable (uncheck) the text adornment in the style component list. When a new label is placed on selected objects, the text adornment definition will be used as a template and the river name will be added automatically. If no attribute exists, the style will be applied and the new label will read “Label” ready for free-text editing.

Related topic: Intelligent Labeling With Attributes.

When you’re satisfied with your new style, click back onto “Style” (1) and enter a name for your new creation (2). Click “Add To Library” to lock your new style and place it into the Library Manager. By default, new styles are added to the My Library > My Symbols collection in the Library Manager.To organize your styles and symbols, drag-and-drop them from My Symbols collection to any other collection in My Library. New styles and symbols are immediately available in the Symbols Palette where you can use them for drawing. Your symbols are retained in the Library Manager for future use, editing, and even sharing.

HINT: Consider how you will name your new style. Styles and symbols are displayed alphabetically in the Symbols palette and you can name related symbols and styles in such a way as to keep them grouped. Make use of collections and categories to organize styles and symbols into related groups (a style or symbol can belong to any number of categories within a collection simultaneously).