Lab 2

Lab 2 was our introduction to Adobe Illustrater otherwise known as AI.  AI is an extremely powerful tool that is used after a map has been created in ArcGIS to do finishing touches as well as add other elements to a map.  For this lab we exported an ArcGIS file to an AI file which allowed us to tranfer it from ArcGIS to AI.  Once in AI we opened the file which consisted of the North arrow, the Legend, the Scale, and the map of Florida Cities.  I added the text as well as the background.  The objective of this lab was for us to become familiar with the power as well as some of the more common tools found in AI.  Everything in AI is grouped into layers which we had to edit in order to make the shapes, such as all of the parts of the legend, stay together and allow movement of the shapes simultaneously.  This was one of the harder topics for me to grasp because when I moved some shapes they disappered.  But undoing the action brought them back so I repeated this until I got the shapes situated how I wanted.  The only reason I added color to the text and the background is so I was more familiar with the color tool.  One interesting thing I found was that you needed to link the scale and the map because you can't create scales in AI so it was created in ArcGIS.  If you were to mess with the scale in AI it would become not a true scale.  So linking the map and scale is necessary especially if you need to change the size of the map itself.  By changing the map size it would also change the scale size proportionally.  Overall this lab took me from no experience with AI to being fairly comfortable in its operation.  Although, I am 100% sure that AI has way more power than I even know about.