Splitting large polygons when exporting to pdf
After exporting a polygon from ArcGIS Pro to a PDF with a high number of vertices (>32k) and then opening the file in Adobe Illustrator, the polygon is rendered incorrectly (Figure 1).
Adobe Illustrator has a limit on the number of vertices within a single path-polygon. ArcMap cuts these large polygons into smaller pieces when exporting to PDF, and these are rendered correctly in Adobe Illustrator (Figure 2).
I propose that the Export to PDF function in ArcGIS Pro should be able to perform a similar slicing of polygons with an excess number of vertices.
Hi @PavelSeemann Here's a handy trick I use with split paths. This Illustrator limitation can sometimes be alleviated by using the Pathfinder -> Unite tool. It is a tool I use frequently to merge these broken filled paths. I think this solution will be quicker than editing your data in GIS. For smaller maps, using a more generalized version of the data produces a single Illustrator path (e.g. using a 1: 500 mil dataset instead of 1:1 mil on a 1:500,000,000 map, etc.). One thing to make sure to do prior to Unite, is to delete any duplicated paths paths in the Illustrator layer. Sometimes, because paths are split, there will be a couple of duplicated paths. These duplicate paths are typically unclosed, so these Illustrator steps should get you quickly to a desired layer without any GIS work:
1. When you open in Illustrator, and see a "polygon" like this image below, lock all layers except the one with only the artwork for this split feature.
2. Find all open (unclosed) paths and duplicate paths. A hacky way I do this is to make the color for this feature very dark, and then give it opacity. This reveals overlapping artwork (spots that are darker than others, see image below).
3. Delete all duplicate and open paths.
3. With all the artwork for that feature selected, perform the Unite tool in Illustrator.
For annotations, the Pro-toAIX export best practices currently recommends to label the layer in Pro without using annotation for the AIX exports. The Maps for Adobe team is investigating further updates. Thanks for the note! It would be good to communicate further re: what you see with annotations.
@SarahBell Thank you so much for the tips, Sarah. I appreciate it.
But in the projects I'm working on, I don't mind if the paths are split like in Figure 2. Our company publishes mainly school printed maps where the splitting does not matter.
The reason I published this idea is so that I don't have to keep an eye out for polygons that have an excessive number of vertices. Now that I know about the problem, the easiest way for me is to split the polygon in GIS and export it.
Respectively, we would like to move from ArcMap (where our workflows are established and work fine) to ArcGIS Pro. However, in ArcGIS Pro I have run into a problem with unclosed paths after exporting to PDF. I now know that this is more of an Adobe and PDF issue. And the solution for ArcGIS Pro is to edit the data in GIS. Which is the easiest for our workflow.
Thanks also for the tip on AIX. But unfortunately we use annotations in our maps really a lot (see example), so reworking it into labels would be very laborious.
@JeremyWright I understand and thank you. But may I ask what the abbreviation M4ACC stands for? Thank you.