We are excited to announce the release of MAPublisher version 11.6, the latest update to our MAPublisher extension for Adobe Illustrator. 

MAPublisher 11.6 introduces waffle charts to the MAP Themes chart types, a Point Scaling option to the Add Calculated Data tool, and other performance enhancements and bug fixes.

Here’s what you can expect with the latest MAPublisher 11.6 release:

Waffle chart option added to MAP Themes

The MAP Themes panel welcomes a brand new chart type to MAPublisher 11.6: waffle charts! A waffle chart is a grid composed of equally sized cells, each coloured to depict different categories or segments. It is useful for comparing categories and displaying proportions. Waffle charts are typically used as an alternative to pie charts, making it easier to compare areas, visualize categories with small percentages, and generally make charts more readable.

To create waffle charts in MAPublisher 11.6, open the MAP Themes panel and create a Chart Theme as you usually would. When you open the Edit Chart Theme window, you will notice the brand new “Waffle chart” option in the Type drop-down menu.

As seen in the above image, configuring a waffle chart is very similar to configuring the other chart types with the usual option tabs such as Source Data, Chart Options, General Options, and Title available for customization. The Chart Options tab features a few new options specific to creating waffle charts, including a Calculate Default Scale button to help select a suitable value for the data represented in each cell.

To learn more about creating waffle charts in MAPublisher, check out the support page for Chart Themes.

Add Calculated Data now features a point scaling option

The Add Calculated Data tool—found in the Data Creation section of the MAP Toolbar—gains a new calculation option in MAPublisher 11.6. When the selected Layer is a point layer, the brand new “Point Scaling” option will become available in the Calculation drop-down menu.

The Point Scaling option adds a field to your attributes containing a calculation for point scaling sourced from an existing numeric attribute. The “Automatically Apply Point Scaling to Layer” checkbox allows you to immediately resize your points according to the selected scaling settings upon clicking “OK” to close the window instead of creating a new attribute. There are four Scale Methods to choose from, each calculating the scale slightly differently depending on which factors are important to you. For example, selecting the Flannery method applies a correction factor to account for natural human bias that causes us to underestimate the size of larger symbols. In contrast, choosing the Exponential method increases the size of symbols exponentially relative to their data values to emphasize differences, especially among larger values.

MAPublisher 11.6 is available now!

If you want to learn more about the new MAPublisher 11.6 features or have any questions, please check out our Support Centre. MAPublisher 11.6 is immediately available today. It is free to all current MAPublisher users with active maintenance subscriptions and available as an upgrade for non-maintenance users.