MAP Crop to Shape

Use MAP Crop To Shape to quickly crop MAP Layers using shapes other than rectangles and ellipses.

Requirements

Before using MAP Crop To Shape, ensure that layers being cropped are visible and unlocked in the Adobe Illustrator Layers panel.  If there are invisible and locked layers user will be prompted to unlock/unhide these layers or skip them.  The extent of the map that will remain after cropping must be visible on the screen, so make sure to zoom out sufficiently. MAP Crop To Shape only works with closed paths (areas).

The purpose of MAP Crop to Shape is to cut vector data (points, lines and polygons). However, some Adobe Illustrator-specific objects may not be cropped properly using this tool:

• Blend and Live Paint objects
• Any art using effects that have been rasterized
• Custom art such as scale bars, grids/graticules, north arrows (expand custom art to crop)
• Compound shapes
• Legacy and overflowing text
• Locked objects (command box: either treat locked layers as unlocked or skip locked layers)
• Hidden layers (will be skipped) (command box: either crop hidden layers or skip hidden layers)
• Images

Using MAP Crop To Shape

To crop to a shape, select a closed path object and click the Crop > MAP Crop To Shape button on the MAPublisher Toolbar, or from the menu Object > MAPublisher > MAP Crop To Shape.

In the Crop To Shape dialogue box, choose the layers to target for crop: All unlocked layers, All unlocked layers in a specific MAP View, or only a specific layer (and sublayers).

The All unlocked layers option will crop everything from an unlocked layer.

For the All unlocked layers in [a specific MAP View] option, choose a MAP View from the drop-down list. Only unlocked layers in the chosen MAP View will be cropped.  If there are invisible and locked layers user will be prompted to unlock/unhide these layers or skip them.

For the Only [layer] option, choose a specific layer from the drop-down list. Only objects on that layer will be cropped. Optionally, click the Include sublayers check box to include sublayers belonging to the chosen layer.

Path Utilities can resolve invalid topology by using the find self-intersection points action or remove duplicate points action for the area you are cropping. See Path Utilities, in the next section.

Advanced Options

The MAP Crop to Shape Advanced options is shared with MAP Vector Crop.