Street shapes for drawing maps

[David.P]

Hi forum,

I was wondering whether there is a street shape collection for easily drawing maps?

The ones I found included in Visio

...don't seem to work properly (only show up as solid black lines).

Thanks for any hints,
Regards David.P

[Paul Herber]

I think that's all they are supposed to be. The icon image is a bit overblown.

[David.P]

Thank you Paul. Pity that there seems nothing better available. I suppose it is quite hard to code street shapes that snap nicely, can be bent freely AND make pretty intersections.

The latter seems the most difficult (for me):

[Yacine]

Have you tried the roads in "Transportation Shapes (*).vss". They look smarter than the road shapes.
You may need to adjust their appearance however.

[David.P]

Thanks Yacine, yes they look smarter!

Unfortunately though, it seems that there is not roundabout available.

Anyway, I actually might try this approach instead:
http://veerle-v2.duoh.com/blog/comments/the_easiest_way_to_draw_a_navigation_map_in_illustrator_cs/

Cheers David.P

[Yacine]

It depends on what your intention is. I would personally stick with Visio.
By the way there's a roundabout in the roads stencil. Taking the best out of both stencils should be feasable.
Cheers,
Yacine

[David.P]

Yes, I'd draw with Visio, however possibly using the same approach described over there.

[Yacine]

Sure, this was also my first idea, but it is tedious.
Could you send a sample image of what you want to draw?

[David.P]

Never mind Yacine -- I just found out that you can download SVG vector maps at openstreetmap.org, and then fully edit everything for example in Visio:



So I guess I will never have to draw a map from scratch again in my life

BTW, Openstreetmap draw their maps with the same approach as discussed above.

Cheers David.P