SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby John Lovaas » Aug 17, 2009 12:29 pm

Hi Jason-

That 4041512 figure looks suspiciously like a UTM northing- are all the fields specifying your station datums filled out correctly?

Eek! Half of a cave location ;-)

jl
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby Jeff Bartlett » Aug 17, 2009 3:14 pm

Somehow I missed that this was addressed to me. I concur with John that it looks like a UTM issue. I am on limited sleep today so it's not a good time for me to take a look, but if you want to upload a data set I can take a look tomorrow for you.
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby rchrds » Aug 18, 2009 4:55 am

Yes, obviously this is the case- the question is why is it applying a fix to one day of survey which has only one fix station, and then apparently trying to move it on the second day of survey when no fix station is included in the second day of survey?

Xcathodex- if you send me your email, I will forward you a .zip of data. Thanks for taking the time.

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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby rchrds » Aug 18, 2009 10:49 am

Yet another problem.

Now, on my third roundtrip session, suddenly there is a problem with the w2d Ref data. Apparently it was corrupted somehow when it was saved as an SVGZ in Illustrator. Despite the fact that it remained locked and hidden the whole time.
Image
So, I go to Illustrator, in hopes that I can change the image kerning on those elements (why did they change between this round-trip and the last?) And i cannot edit any of those items.
Image

Any suggestions- and this is a show stopper, as Walls will not allow a further export with the corrupted w2d Ref data.
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby rchrds » Aug 18, 2009 11:21 am

Okay, as a follow up, I did finally manage to set the kerning on the w2d Ref element to 0 instead of Auto. This made no difference at all. It is interesting that in the original (non-round-tripped) version, the Ref element is one line of data, and one text element, in a <group> where it is the only element. It has the following text:

5AUG07 Plan: 0 Scale: 1:600 Frame: 1800x1200f Center: -335.331 -84.899

In the first roundtripped version, the w2d Ref element is still in a <group>, however now it is in three elements, which comprise the same sort of data, broken into three items. It will not open, and import for round tripping if I leave it in three text elements, or combine them into one, to read the following:

Darnells/Cooper Creek Cave Plan: 0 Scale: 1:600 Frame: 1700x1100f Center: 0 0

I have tried changing about every element and re-importing it, and nothing seems to work. Any ideas? And is there anyone else who works with this program? Are Cathodex and myself the only ones who use walls?

Jason
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby rchrds » Aug 18, 2009 11:28 am

Got it. For fXXX sake. Ok- so here is some shared learning-

Apparently, there appears to be a maximum line length that will get put into this reference line of text and for some reason upon export, Illustrator (CS) chops it up to fit a line length, and makes it separate text items.

Well, you can edit the text in the layers block by double-clicking the element, and it appears to be making the changes.

However, you are not actually changing the ref data text line. Apparently, you have to actually zoom into the text element in the box and change it there, also, as it appears that is what Walls actually looks for-

Once this was done, I was able to open it in Walls 2D, and able to continue on my third round-trip process.

Jason
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby Jeff Bartlett » Aug 18, 2009 11:45 am

rchrds wrote:Image

The first thing that jumps out at me is that there are three items on the w2d Ref layer. Does the original SVG from Walls look like that, or did additional information accidentally end up on that layer? A likely workarond would be to go back to the original exported SVG and copy the REF layer from that file to your working file.

I'd also definitely output as SVG from Illustrator instead of SVGZ, as the uncompressed SVG will allow you to fiddle with the XML should it be necessary.
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby rchrds » Aug 18, 2009 11:49 am

Yes, the export from walls did look like that, with three lines, which consisted of the data from the one line split into three. Not sure why it did that, on subsequent export, it did not do it again. Very strange.
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby Jeff Bartlett » Aug 18, 2009 12:45 pm

Weird indeed. Glad you figured it out!

We're definitely not the only ones using Walls, it's at least the standard here in AR, it's what CRF uses for Mammoth Cave and I think the MSS as well. As for the SVG roundtripping workflow, Spike Crews and Stan Allison are also both using it on large maps.
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Re: SVG Roundtripping with Walls & Illustrator

Postby Jeff Bartlett » Aug 18, 2009 12:50 pm

by the way, off topic, but i just changed my user name to my real name because i have a tendency to miss things addressed to me. would've done that 18 months ago if i knew i could!

:bananabat:
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