Carto on Downfallnotes

Batch replace glyphs/font shields with ai symbols in MAPublisher LabelPro

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Replace text glyph shields with your own Illustrator symbols en-masse! What is this magic? We’ll use a custom shields file, a selection trick, and a script to make it happen. If this is interesting to you, read on..

Overview

When I make maps with Avenza MAPublisher, one of the common things that I need to do is place shield labels on roads. This is possible with an extra extension to the base MAPublisher license called MAP LabelPro. It’s worth noting that this requires an additional up-front cost and annual maintenance fee.

Expressions in MAPublisher

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A group of snippets to help you manipulate attributes in MAPublisher

Select Empty Fields

The key here is to have an empty space between the quote marks

COLUMN_NAME=" "

Concatenate two fields

Make a new, empty field with the type you want (string/text), and using the ‘Apply Expression’ option from the MAP Attributes panel menu, this will merge ‘column1’ and ‘column 2’ with a space in between and save it as the value in the newly created column.

GNIS Bézier

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:26:15 +0000

Overview

The GNIS (Geographic Names Information System) is the authoritative* source of information for place names in the United States. It is a fantastic dataset and despite the fact that there seems to be no reasonable way to get errors fixed–namely grossly misplaced peaks and elevation values–it has proven to be a valuable resource for cartographers. All of the features in the GNIS dataset are point features even if they represent features that are distinctly linear.

What is MAPublisher?

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:26:15 +0000

MAPublisher is an extension for Adobe Illustrator that allows Cartographers to directly import spatial data into an .ai document while retaining spatial information and feature attributes. This allows for rescaling, reprojection, and generating labels from attribute tables among many other things.

Check out tips and tricks here for making maps in Illustrator with the MAPublisher extension.