Creating Feature and Text Indexes

Create a feature-based index

1. Open MyGrid.ai (saved from the Creating an Index Grid tutorial).

2. In the Adobe Illustrator Layers panel, make the Country labels Text layer visible.

3. Select the grid in the map document and click the Make Index button on the MAPublisher toolbar.

4. Choose the Make index based on label and matching feature position option. In the Label Layer drop-down list, select Country labels. In the Feature layer drop-down list, select world_area (the layer that was labeled). In the Label text matches attributes drop-down list, select Country (the attribute column used to label the map).

5. Click the Advanced button.

Advanced options are available for fine-tuning index appearance.

6. In the Advanced Options dialog box, select Feature label from the Sort By drop-down list. Under Output Formats, select the Single-line expanded option. To add an attribute to the index, select the Capital and Population attributes in the Select Additional Attributes list.

The grid cell locator and feature name in the index file are separated by a single tab. The index is sorted alphabetically by feature label.

7. Click OK to accept the advanced options and in the Make Index dialog box, click OK to save the index. Browse to a location to save the index, name it MyIndex.txt, and click OK.

A text file is created based on the settings entered in the Make Index dialog box.

8. Leave the Adobe Illustrator document open for the next tutorial.

Create a text-based index

9. Select the grid in the map document and click the Make Index button on the MAPublisher toolbar.

10. Choose the Make index based on label position option. Click the Layers button and click the Selected toggle for Country labels, then click OK.

Indexing by label position generates an index containing only grid cells that contain a text label within it.

 Text labels are indexed according to the text object's anchor.

11. Click the Advanced button. Select Grid Cell from the Sort By index by drop-down list. Under Specify Separators, to the right of Attribute, click the tab button. In the Edit Attribute-Grid Separator dialog box, type "," into the Custom box and click OK.

The grid cell locator and feature label in the index file is separated by a single comma. The index is sorted alpha-numerically by grid cell label.

12. Click OK to close the Advanced Options dialog box.

13. In the Make Index dialog box, click OK to save the index. Browse to a location to save the index, name it MyGridIndex.txt, and click Save.

14. Open the MyGridIndex.txt file to view it.

A text file is created based on the settings entered including the custom separator specified in the Advanced dialog box.

15. Close the document without saving.