Cavechat.org

These tutorials by Brandon Kowallis on using Illustrator for drawing cave maps require Quicktime viewer
http://www.brandonkowallis.com/Video.htm

I'm resurrecting this old thread to mention that Brandon Kowallis has moved his Adobe Illustrator tutorials to the Utah Grotto website:

http://utahgrotto.org/sample-page/tutorials/

You no longer need QuickTime to view the videos, as they're now hosted on YouTube. In addition to AI, there are also a series of Compass and Auriga tutorials as well.

The direct YouTube link for the AI tutorial playlist is:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0570F9569A56E1E5

Brandon, on behalf of me and all the other Illustrator idiots you've helped over the years, I'll offer a huge !

I'll second that, these video's have been a huge help in leaning Illustrator. I'd probably still be staring at a blank page without them.

Thanks for updating the link!

I wish you would have updated this a few months ago David. I searched long and hard and finally found the videos on the Utah Grotto site and it helped me get off to a fast start drafting my first map on Illustrator. Thanks for updating this info

Chad

Chads93GT wrote:I wish you would have updated this a few months ago David. I searched long and hard and finally found the videos on the Utah Grotto site and it helped me get off to a fast start drafting my first map on Illustrator. Thanks for updating this info

I think I actually looked for these on your behalf and couldn't find them. There is a really good demonstration of using the "edit selected paths" feature to append existing lines instead of constantly creating new line segments.

At the time Brandon produced these video tutorials, there was a bizarre software gap involved with getting a lineplot from Compass into Illustrator. The old Cave Illustrator plugin, which would import Compass files directly into Illustrator, didn't support modern CS versions of Illustrator; Compass could export to AutoCAD DXF format, which CS4 claimed to be able to import, but it didn't work well enough to actually use.

So Brandon's tutorial #6 suggests the desperate method of either physically printing the lineplot from Compass to paper, and then scanning it back into the computer as raster, or taking a low-resolution screenshot from Compass and then attempting to scale the bitmap appropriately in Illustrator. He then manually traces the lineplot as vector, by hand, and individually labels each station.

Please don't do this!

The Compass SVG Exporter, a part of the "new" set of cartography tools, allows you to export a fantastic, properly-scaled vector version of the lineplot, station labels, LRUDS, passage geometry, etc. in a format that Illustrator (and Inkscape!) can import and use seamlessly. Larry Fish has an excellent tutorial on using the SVG exporter at the Compass website:

http://www.fountainware.com/compass/Cartography/SVGExport/SVGExport.htm

The resultant SVG file is organized well into layers, but they're in the ugly Walls round-tripping format. The first thing I do is reorganize and rename the layers since I generally don't attempt round-tripping.

There's also a Compass cartography tool for morphing sketches as an alternative to Brandon's method of re-penciling his sketches using a lightbox and the lineplot printout, but not everyone is sold on the utility of morphing sketches (I am!).

Going back through these video tutorials, I'm amazed at how many little Illustrator tips I'd forgotten or never absorbed previously!

driggs wrote:The Compass SVG Exporter, a part of the "new" set of cartography tools, allows you to export a fantastic, properly-scaled vector version of the lineplot, station labels, LRUDS, passage geometry, etc. in a format that Illustrator (and Inkscape!) can import and use seamlessly.

2013: the year it finally becomes possible to export a line plot from Compass and end up with a line plot in Illustrator without sacrificing one's first-born?

Jeff Bartlett wrote:2013: the year it finally becomes possible to export a line plot from Compass and end up with a line plot in Illustrator without sacrificing one's first-born?

The "new" Compass cartography tools were released three years ago.

First-born sacrifice still required, however. Oops, sorry, I was thinking of Therion!

Edit: Wow, that means Brandon Kowallis's video tutorials (from 2006?) are over 7 years old! That's beyond ancient in Internet years. Bartlett, when are you going to produce an updated video tutorial to teach me how to win a blue ribbon with my 200' long sewer caves?

I found the entire process easy, but Yes jeff, you did look for me. I forgot how I even found them......... Maybe it was you. But you definitely got me started with getting the line plot in and starting the drafting...Look at me now, im almost as good as you! or not.

Does anyone know what software Brandon used (or another that will do the same thing) to video his screen work? I have been asked to do something similar with Walls for some of my carto students, and I can't find a good program that does this.