Cartographic Technique

Drawing City-Block Style Maps

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City-block style maps (sometimes referred to as “European-style”) are characterized by their use of negative space. Shapes – in the form of city blocks – define the positive space, whereas the road areas are negative space. While Ortelius excels at designing modern style road maps, with connectable tracks and built-in symbols, it also has great tools for creating city-block style maps. Here’s how… Read more »

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Using the Cookie Cutter

Splitting Area Features on Your Map

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Need a quick way to split existing objects (like states) into sections? You can do it with the Cookie Cutter operation. Here’s how… Read more »

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Flowing styles

Designing Tapered River Styles

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Ortelius has always had great tools to create smooth meandering rivers & streams. Now they can look even better with naturally tapering ends. We’ve added an expert Tapered Stroke component to the Style Inspector – you can use it to design your own creative map styles. Here’s how… Read more »

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Creating complex symbols

Tips for Static Text in Map Symbols

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Sometimes static text (as opposed to dynamic text like route numbers) is an integral part of a symbol. These symbols may be re-scaled and shared for different purposes, such as placement in a legend and reuse at a different size within a brochure or book. For maximum scalability and consistency with complex symbols, convert text objects to shapes when creating a symbol. Your symbols will always look right, even when shared with people who don’t have the same fonts loaded on their system. Here’s how… Read more »

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New and improved!

Map Points of Interest with Smart Sequence Markers

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When you need to map points of interest with numbered placemarkers, look no further than Ortelius’ smart Sequence Markers. These symbols save time and sanity. Place Sequence Markers just like any other symbol and they’ll automatically number themselves 1,2,3… (we should call them magic).

Our customers have been finding Sequence Markers really useful, and with their suggestions we’ve made Sequence Markers even better. Here’s how… Read more »

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Using the Style Inspector

Randomized Patterns Make Interesting Map Fills

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RandPattern

Randomized patterns can add texture and variety to an otherwise flat map. This is an especially good effect for representing features with naturally occurring randomness, such as ground-cover and forests. Ortelius has several tools in the Style Inspector to help you make awesome randomized patterns. Here’s how…

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