We’ve recently added a deliciously useful feature to MAPublisher: waffle charts!
Waffle charts are grid-based visualizations where each cell represents a fixed quantity of data. They offer a clear, easy-to-read alternative to traditional pie charts, especially when comparing multiple categories or displaying categories with small percentages. Whether you’re working with population figures, economic data, or any other dataset, waffle charts can help your map users quickly compare proportions or observe patterns.
In our newest video, we walk you through the process of creating waffle charts in MAPublisher 11.6, starting in the MAP Themes panel. Our demonstration compares exports between Canada and the United States across nine different categories, from oil and minerals to food and transportation products.
The video contains a brief overview for creating a waffle chart, using the Edit Chart Theme window to specify your settings (including some new options specific to waffle charts), and how to set up a legend to assist users in interpreting your charts.
With editable styling options that allow full customization of the appearance of your waffle charts, this new chart type is a fantastic way to enhance the visual storytelling power of your maps. Waffle charts can even be styled using native Illustrator graphic styles or custom swatches you’ve created yourself!
Ready to get started? Watch the full demonstration below to find out just how easy it is to bring your data to life in a new way with waffle charts in MAPublisher 11.6.
For more information on waffle charts, check out our Support Page for Chart Themes.
Toronto, ON, March 25, 2025 – Avenza Systems Inc., producer of the Avenza Maps app for mobile devices and geospatial extensions for Adobe Creative Cloud, including Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher version 11.6 for Adobe Illustrator. This version introduces waffle charts to the MAP Themes chart types, adds a Point Scaling option to the Add Calculated Data tool, and offers other performance enhancements and bug fixes.
MAPublisher cartography software seamlessly integrates more than seventy GIS mapping tools into Adobe Illustrator to help users create beautiful maps from geospatial data. Import industry-standard GIS data formats and make crisp, clean maps with all attributes and georeferencing intact using the Adobe Illustrator design environment.
New features of MAPublisher 11.6 for Adobe Illustrator include:
Introduction of waffle charts to MAP Themes chart types: Waffle charts can now be created in MAPublisher by opening the MAP Themes panel, creating a Chart Theme, and selecting “Waffle chart” from the Type drop-down menu.
Addition of a Point Scaling option to the Add Calculated Data tool: The Add Calculated Data tool now features a Calculation type of “Point Scaling,” which creates an attribute for point scaling values derived from an existing attribute in a dataset.
Additional performance enhancements and bug fixes
To utilize the improvements and enhancements offered in MAPublisher 11.6, users require a valid Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and a compatible operating system. For questions and information on how compatibility requirements may affect your organization, please contact our Support Centre.
MAPublisher 11.6 is immediately available free of charge to all current MAPublisher users with active maintenance and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users starting at US$999. New licenses are available from US$1,749. MAPublisher FME Auto and MAPublisher LabelPro are also available as add-ons starting at US$599. Academic, floating, and volume licenses are also available. Prices include one year of full maintenance. Visit www.avenza.com/mapublisher for more details.
More about Avenza Systems Inc.
Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools to make better maps. Avenza also offers the mobile Avenza Maps app to sell, purchase, distribute, and use maps on iOS and Android devices. For further information contact: 416-487-5116 – info@avenza.com – www.avenza.com
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.
In this edition of Cartographer Chronicles, we interviewed Craig Molyneux, a veteran of the cartography industry and the winner of the second runner-up prize in the 2024 Avenza Map Contest! Craig’s journey in the world of cartography is a testament to the passion, adaptability, and ever-evolving landscape of mapmaking. Sparking from an interest in graphic design and a love for the outdoors, Craig found his calling in cartography, blending artistic skill with geographic precision. From hand-drawn maps to the early days of digital cartography, Craig has always been on the cutting edge of the industry. Through his company, CartDeco, he has worked with major publishers, created award-winning maps, and inspired the next generation of cartographers. Craig is sharing his cartographic journey with us in his own words.
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Discovering and Navigating the World of Cartography
At secondary school I had a real interest in graphic design, and also was interested in the outdoors. Using map products became second nature to me as I would be out camping and hiking most weekends. I had a little inkling that I would end up in Cartography, but I quickly discovered that graphic design was super competitive and only the elite made it through to university. After completing high school, when searching for a likely university course, Cartography jumped out at me, and I quickly embraced it. Back in the 1980s there were only a couple of universities in Australia that offered Cartography as a degree, and I went to RMIT University in Melbourne.
Over 40 years my career has taken me through the private and public sector, however I feel most comfortable working for myself. I feel there’s more creative freedom when you can focus and concentrate on the jobs that give you pleasure.
CartDeco started as a side hustle in the 1990s. When the early Apple Macs hit the market I bought a second-hand one, and using the very first version of Adobe Illustrator I started doing computerised mapping. Things were pretty basic back then (compared with what we have now), however I felt I was at the cutting edge using a desktop computer to create maps. Prior to that all of my cartography had been done by hand, either using pen and ink or scribe, peel-coat and stick-down type.
After producing maps for the tourism industry I was beginning to get known within the local publishing industry and CartDeco took off. I made a connection with Henry Boegheim, who had started Hema Maps, a Brisbane-based mapping company, and Henry asked me to produce maps for him, so that’s when I concentrated full time on CartDeco. Working in a home office at the back of a shed, CartDeco continued to produce maps for Hema Maps then slowly expanded to other publishers, like Australian Geographic, the AA in the UK, Universal Publishers, Hardie Grant Publishing and many more. I did have young graduates work with me from time to time and it was a pleasure to be able to mentor the cartographers of the future.
Very quickly after starting desktop-based cartography it became apparent that scanning and tracing linework was not the most efficient production method. I stumbled upon Avenza’s MAPublisher in its very early days. I think I was one of the early adopters. Back then it could import a few geospatial datasets and that was about all, but now it’s grown to be a fully-formed production tool, essential in my cartographic workflow. Being one of the only Australians using the application I was approached by Ted Florence to be a local distributor for the software. I did this for a number of years, providing training and support for local users before handing over to Gavin James at Mapuccino.
Career Highlights
I’ve been lucky enough to work on some fabulous cartographic projects and work with some great people over my cartographic journey. As Hema Maps began to expand, in 1998 they had a vision to map the centre of Australia like never before. Sending out field teams to map the roads and features of our vast continent, they asked me to compile six maps covering about two thirds of Australia. This was a daunting task. Open data was just being thought of and Geoscience Australia, to their credit, had made available their 1:250,000 dataset of Australia. As was soon discovered, data in remote and rural areas was unreliable and many years out of date. MAPublisher was used to create this first series of maps, importing 1:250,000 data into Adobe Illustrator and combining it with GPX routes that had been collected by the on-ground team. Comprehensive field notes were used to add “meat to the bone” of the map, with many unique and culturally significant details added that had never before appeared on published maps.
Entitled Great Desert Tracks, the series of six maps at a scale of 1:1,250,000 enabled the new generation of 4×4 explorers to safely travel in Australia’s outback. The series is now into its 9th edition.
A key relationship I made early on was with the senior cartographer at Australian Geographic (AG) magazine, Will Pringle. Will became a long-standing friend and mentor, who sadly passed away in November 2024. He had a profound impact on my career and was generous with his knowledge and wisdom. Will asked me to update AG’s Australia for Adventurers and Dreamers map for the magazine. This became a staple product for many years and ended up on many a child’s bedroom wall.
I’ve enjoyed commissions for small and large jobs, from a simple map for a brochure to large atlas projects with maps numbering in the hundreds. One project that I was particularly pleased to contribute to was the Jacaranda School Atlas, published by John Wiley and Sons. As a secondary school geography student I used an early edition of this atlas and it has been a mainstay in Australian secondary schools ever since. I was lucky enough to be asked to work on the 7th, 8th and 9th editions of the atlas and to revise the design to a more contemporary style. Originally the atlas plates were created using ArcGIS, as this was felt that it would be easier to update and index the atlas, however over time we realised that this was not the case and a production approach using MAPublisher was simpler and indexing was easier. Other atlas commissions included editions of the James Halliday’s Wine Atlas for Hardie Grant Publishing and various titles for Lighthouses of Australia.
Whilst it’s nice to design and produce maps for clients, it’s especially nice to design, produce and publish your own maps, and over the past five years I’ve been creating large wall maps for use in either the classroom or as a collectible piece of art for the living room or office.
The Earth Wall Map has been a passion project combining the latest global datasets (including Natural Earth Data) to present a view of our world like no other. My interest in all things Roman has led to the creation of the Roman Empire wall map (which won the second runner-up prize in the 2024 Avenza Map Contest). After ten years of research and production it has finally seen the light of day. Measuring in at 1600 x 1100 mm the map is a valuable tool for researchers and educators.
Cartographic Methods
Technology has impacted our profession immeasurably. As new software tools have come along, and computing power has increased, we have been able to make new and improved cartographic design choices. The provision of detailed open digital elevation data and satellite data, along with improvements to 2D and 3D imaging tools, has improved the types of maps we produce.
My typical workflow is to use PostgreSQL for data storage, QGIS for data manipulation and editing, with the finishing of artwork in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I also use tools like Natural Scene Designer Pro and Eduard for creating relief, and Avenza Geographic Imager for reprojecting imagery and relief. I do like experimenting with other tools as they come along, like Blender for example, and I’m dabbling in the use of drones to collect detailed base imagery and using WebODM to stitch images and create surface models.
You’re never too old to learn new methods using new tools, however there are fundamental cartographic principles that still apply when compiling a map. I’m not a big fan of maps created out of GIS applications that use auto styles and auto labelling. Whilst this has improved in recent years they are still easy to spot and lack the craftsmanship of a well designed map.
The Avenza suite of applications has proven itself over the years to be fit-for-purpose in map production. I’ve used Esri ArcGIS and QGIS for map production, however these don’t really suit my creative needs. For clients in the publishing industry, there is a need to provide artwork in Adobe Illustrator or pdf format. Being able to maintain geographic referencing and layers in the final output is critical. I enjoy the seamless integration between Illustrator/MAPublisher and Photoshop/Geographic Imager when working with projections.
Recently I have been producing a series of walking maps solely for the Avenza Maps app. Using open data sources like OpenStreetMap and Sentinel imagery, a walking map can be quickly produced for any area on the planet. Additionally the Avenza Maps app is used for field checking the map prior to publication. The whole Avenza Map Store ecosystem works well for me, from publishing, promoting and accounting of sales.
What’s Next?
History is an interest of mine and combining this with cartography I see an opportunity to create more maps like the Roman Empire wall map on specific themes. My next map in production is a wall map of the conquests of Alexander the Great.
My indigenous heritage gives me a deep connection to place. My ancestors have been on this continent (Australia) for at least 40,000 years. In Australia it’s been a challenging few years getting the broader non-Aboriginal population to give the Traditional Owners a Voice to parliament. What that exercise has shown me is that there’s much education to be done around our long-standing history and connection to the continent we now call Australia. Geographic place naming is one area where countries like Australia, with a very brief colonial history, can embrace the rich stories that connect us to place. Stories that go back over a thousand generations have been used to connect us to features in the landscape. The stories are ever-evolving and provide a multi-layered view of place. Place is described through song, dance, art and story. Rather than name features after recent arrivals, battles or long-dead members of the British aristocracy, we have an opportunity to promote unique culture through language and place naming. By imbuing data and maps with the rich cultural heritage of place we give everyone a deeper connection to place.
Insight for Aspiring and New Cartographers
Our industry is a very niche one, and what I’ve discovered over my cartographic journey is just how friendly and helpful everyone is. Other cartographers genuinely care about your success and are happy to assist you with either helpful technical advice or putting you in touch with the right people. If you’re starting out on your cartographic journey, reach out to those whose work you admire. Their enthusiasm and care may surprise you. Feel free to contact me any time if you have technical questions (I can’t guarantee I can answer the tricky ones) or just need advice on how to get your passion converted into a small business. My email is craigmolyneux@mac.com.
Check out our other Cartographer Chronicles blogs here!
In this Map Spotlight, we are showcasing the Grand Prize winner of the 2024 Avenza Map Contest—Heavens: Majesty of the Night Sky by Matthew Chwastyk of National Geographic, with additional contributions from Patricia Healy, Heidi Schultz, Eve Conant, Caroline Braun, Scott Zillmer, and Sandi Owatverot-Nuzzo. This particular map was created for inclusion as a poster in the special space issue of National Geographic Magazine, using the most recent NASA data on star locations, constellation boundaries, asterisms, and deep-sky objects.
Matthew plotted stars of magnitude 5 and brighter, which marks the threshold for naked-eye visibility. Star magnitudes and variable stars are represented by graduated symbols, with brighter stars appearing larger. The stars are plotted on a supplemental set of hemispheres featuring the latest whole-sky survey projected into the map view to display how the sky appears in infrared, including a glowing representation of the Milky Way galaxy. Stars are labeled in both their traditional names and in Greek letters using the Bayer system. Matthew further enhanced the visual appeal of the map with a key containing representative images of deep-sky objects on the bottom left side.
Select the images below to see a detailed look at Matthew’s map
Making the Map
One of the most eye-catching visual elements of this map is the sky imagery on which the star data is displayed. Matthew prepared this imagery to be used for the map by reprojecting it in Geographic Imager using the Transform tool. This is how the hemispheres of the two main maps were created, after which they were imported into MAPublisher.
In MAPublisher, Matthew used the MAP View Editor tool to create a workspace that utilized a hemispherical-shaped coordinate system, such as the stereographic projection. The MAP Point Plotter tool was used to place selected deep-sky objects on the map using estimated coordinates.
The MAP Themes tool was essential in allowing Matthew to approach the styling of the stars in a hierarchical format by categorizing them based on magnitude, ensuring the most prominent stars stood out the most. Stars were then labeled using the MAPublisher LabelPro add-on, with manual adjustments minimized by the intuitive nature of the tool.
Matthew used the Create Knockouts tool to improve label legibility by creating a mask around text in busy areas of the map. Map legibility was also improved by using the Simplify Art tool to generalize the detail on constellation lines. The Join Lines tool was used to group lines constituting asterisms together, making them easier to manage and style.
Read our other Map Spotlight blogs here, and check out the other winners of the Avenza Map Contest 2024 here!
We are thrilled to announce that the 2024 Avenza Map Contest has officially wrapped up! This year, cartographers from around the world submitted their finest work, showcasing remarkable creativity and skilled cartographic design. Our entrants demonstrated how they harness the capabilities of Avenza software to create impactful and visually appealing cartographic products. With the judging, discussion, and review process now concluded, the Avenza team proudly congratulates this year’s prize winners!
In the coming months, stayed tuned for our Map Spotlight blog series, where we’ll highlight the winning entries and some honourable mentions of the 2024 Avenza Map Contest. Each article will dive deeper into how the winning maps were crafted, featuring insights from their creators, and an exploration of the tools and techniques behind their award-winning designs.
Grand Prize Winner
Heavens: Majesty of the Night Sky Matthew Chwastyk National Geographic
Connect with Matt on X (Twitter) @mapchwastyk. Additional contributors to the map are Patricia Healy, Heidi Schultz, Eve Conant, Caroline Braun, Scott Zillmer, and Sandi Owatverot-Nuzzo.
Runner-Up Prize Winner
South Shetland Islands and the Northern Antarctic Peninsula Tom Patterson US National Park Service (Retired)
Learn more about this map and check out Tom’s other maps on his website. You can also download it from the Avenza Map Store for free! connect with Tom on X (Twitter) @mtnmapper.
Second Runner-Up Prize Winner
The Roman Empire Craig Molyneux CartDeco
This map can be purchased as a 1600 x 1100 mm print on the CartDeco website.
In this Map Spotlight, we are showcasing an honourable mention of the 2021 Avenza Map Contest: Yedoma Permafrost Coverage by Sebastian Laboor, Jens Strauss, and Guido Grosse of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). This map shows the extents of the world’s most ice-rich and climate-sensitive type of permafrost: Yedoma permafrost. This permafrost has been permanently frozen since the last Ice Age, when mammoths still roamed the Arctic tundra, and covers parts of Siberia, Alaska, and Yukon. The team at AWI worked with an international research team from various countries to determine the distribution of Yedoma permafrost, which resulted in this map—the first-ever Arctic-wide Yedoma map.
Creating this map was a tremendous journey, bringing together more than 25 researchers and their decades of permafrost expertise. It is an important step towards understanding how Yedoma permafrost and the massive organic content it has preserved since the last ice age may contribute to future greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere once the area begins to thaw. This map is importantly filling a critical research gap, being used as an important input dataset for new climate models that predict the trajectory of permafrost carbon and its future environmental impacts.
This map and the geospatial dataset are open access and freely available to the public.
Select the images below to see a detailed look at their map
Making the Map
To create the Yedoma permafrost dataset used for this map, Sebastian utilized Adobe Illustrator and MAPublisher as a manual vectorization and attribution tool. Scanned and georeferenced Russian Quaternary geology maps were vectorized using native Illustrator tools, such as the pen and pathfinder tools, and then the MAP Attributes panel was used to assign attributes to these features, and also edit them as necessary later.
The Import tool was essential in allowing them to bring in their supplementary geospatial data to build out the rest of the map. The MAP Views panel and the MAP View Editor were important tools for defining projections, scales, and positions of their map layers. The point data for field sites was added to the map using the MAP Point Plotter tool.
Sebastian used the MAP Vector Crop tool to crop many different layers at once to the map’s extent, allowing for a clean and organized workspace. He also used the MAP Selections and MAP Themes panels to create classes for the data.
The initial positioning of labels was conducted using the MAPublisher LabelPro add-on, with manual adjustments made as needed. Finally, Sebastian added a grid and graticule as well as a North Arrow to complete the finishing touches to the map.
Toronto, ON, November 5, 2024 – Avenza Systems Inc., producer of the Avenza Maps® app for mobile devices and geospatial extensions for Adobe Creative Cloud®, including Geographic Imager® for Adobe Photoshop®, is pleased to announce the release of MAPublisher® version 11.5 for Adobe Illustrator®. This version introduces several compatibility updates, importing Vector Basemaps from custom tile sources, the ability to use the Join Table feature with existing MAP Layers, a new Split Line path utility, and several performance enhancements and bug fixes.
MAPublisher cartography software seamlessly integrates more than seventy GIS mapping tools into Adobe Illustrator to help users create beautiful maps from geospatial data. Import industry-standard GIS data formats and make crisp, clean maps with all attributes and georeferencing intact using the Adobe Illustrator design environment.
New features of MAPublisher v11.5 for Adobe Illustrator include:
Adobe Creative Cloud 2025 compatibility: MAPublisher now supports Adobe Illustrator 2025 (version 29.0) on both Mac and Windows
macOS Sequoia compatibility: MAPublisher also officially supports the new macOS Sequoia (version 15) update
FME Form 2024 compatibility: MAPublisher now supports the recent FME 2024.1 update when using the FME Auto add-on
Importing Vector Basemaps from custom tile sources: Vector Basemap data can now be imported from custom tile sources such as Mapbox, Esri and OpenStreetMap. Data can be imported unstyled and later configured with the brand new “MAP Basemap Styling” panel, which can be found under the Thematic Tools section of the MAPublisher Toolbar.
Join Table from existing MAP Layer: Users can now use the Join Table feature in the MAP Attributes panel to join tables from existing MAP Layers using the “Source Type” drop-down list. These layers may be contained within the active document or any other currently open document.
Split Line action added to Path Utilities menu: The Split Line utility splits a selection of lines into two separate segments at a certain specified length, which can be either relative (i.e. as a percentage of the total line length) or absolute (i.e. at a specified distance in selected units).
Performance enhancements: MAPublisher v11.5 has improved performance when working with files containing a large number of features and attributes. Users can expect improved performance in multiple areas including coordinate system reprojection, applying stylesheets, deleting art, moving art between layers, and splitting layers.
Additional performance improvements and bug fixes
Users require a valid Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and a compatible operating system to utilize the improvements and enhancements offered in MAPublisher v11.5. For questions and information on how compatibility requirements may affect your organization, please contact our Support Centre.
MAPublisher v11.5 is immediately available free of charge to all current MAPublisher users with active maintenance and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users starting at US$739. New licenses are available from US$1,699. MAPublisher FME Auto and MAPublisher LabelPro are also available as add-ons starting at US$569. Academic, floating, and volume licenses are also available. Prices include one year of full maintenance. Visit www.avenza.com/mapublisher for more details.
More about Avenza Systems Inc.
Avenza Systems Inc. is an award-winning, privately held corporation that provides cartographers and GIS professionals with powerful software tools to make better maps. Avenza also offers the mobile Avenza Maps app to sell, purchase, distribute, and use maps on iOS and Android devices. For further information contact: 416-487-5116 – info@avenza.com – www.avenza.com
We are excited to announce the release of MAPublisher version 11.5, the latest update to our MAPublisher extension for Adobe Illustrator.
MAPublisher v11.5 introduces several compatibility upgrades, support for importing vector basemaps from custom tile sources, new functionality for using the Join Table feature with existing MAP Layers, a new Split Line path utility, and other performance improvements and bug fixes.
Here’s what you can expect with the latest MAPublisher v11.5 release:
Compatibility upgrades
We’ve been hard at work this fall, and we’re delighted to share that MAPublisher 11.5 is fully compatible with Adobe Illustrator 2025 (version 29), which was released this October. MAPublisher 11.5 also supports the newly launched macOS Sequoia (version 15) and FME Form 2024 (version 2024.1).
Import Vector Basemaps from custom tile sources
We’ve heard your requests and are thrilled to announce that MAPublisher now supports importing Vector Basemaps from PBF file-based custom tile sources like Mapbox, Esri, and OpenStreetMap! You can access this feature under the “Service” option within the Import Vector Basemaps dialog box. You can add your service by clicking the green plus/+ button next to the drop-down list. This will open up a new window called “Edit Tile Service” where you can give your service a name, provide its URL, set a preferred style if desired, and select whether or not you wish to import unstyled art.
You might also notice that the Configure Vector Basemaps option has moved from the Vector Basemaps button on the MAP Toolbar to its own dedicated button, “MAP Basemap Styling,” located under Thematic Tools.
Visit our Vector Basemaps support page for more detailed information on importing vector basemaps from custom tile sources, including URL formatting!
Join Table now supports tables from existing MAP Layers
The Join Table tool—available from the MAP Attributes panel—has also been enhanced with new functionality in MAPublisher 11.5. The “Source type” option now lets you select either an external file or the new “MAP Layer” option, enabling you to join tables directly from an existing MAP Layer. This layer can be sourced from within your active document or any other currently open document in Illustrator.
Split Line action added to Path Utilities
Split Line is a new option added to the Action menu of the Path Utilities tool. This action splits a selection of lines into two separate segments at a specified length. This length can be measured from either end of the line and can be set as either relative (i.e. as a percentage of the total line length) or absolute (i.e. at a specified distance in selected units).
The Split Line action is an ideal solution for tapering only the endpoints of lines, such as at river mouths. This circumvents the limitation of Illustrator’s native Stroke properties, which automatically taper paths evenly from start to end. With this utility, you also have the option to store the output in a New Layer, allowing for easy selection and batch styling of all end segments.
Other performance improvements
Lastly, you can expect to see improved performance in the following areas:
Improved order of operations on import
In MAPublisher 11.5, we have fixed an issue where data was being simplified before any spatial filtering was applied. Now, the spatial filter is applied first, and art is only simplified if the remaining data exceeds Illustrator’s limit of 32,000 points per path.
Attribute table and projection performance improvements
You should also look for smoother and quicker software performance when working with files containing a large number of features and attributes. These enhancements can be seen in multiple areas, including coordinate system reprojection, applying stylesheets, deleting art, moving art between layers, and splitting layers!
MAPublisher 11.5 is Available Now!
If you would like to learn more about the new MAPublisher v11.5 features or have any questions, please check out our Support Centre.
MAPublisher v11.5 is immediately available today, free of charge to all current MAPublisher users with active maintenance subscriptions and as an upgrade for non-maintenance users. Download here.
With over 20 years of GIS experience, Marikka Williams is well-versed in spatial data and the mapping technologies used to visualize it. Last summer, she applied these skills while exploring Canoe Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park on a stand up paddle board (SUP), using the Avenza Maps app to track her offline adventure. Later, she imported her data into MAPublisher to create a custom memory map of her excursion. She shared her process at this year’s Avenza User Conference.
In her presentation, Marikka walked us through each step of her map-making process. She began by collecting points of interest during her journey, adding placemarks along her route using the Avenza Maps app. Afterward, she exported the data as a KML file, then imported it into MAPublisher for further enhancement. Marikka showcased various MAPublisher tools, such as the MAP View Editor, Stylesheet Themes, and the MAPublisher LabelPro add-on, which she used to bring her map to life. She further enriched her work with Geographic Imager, using recent Landsat imagery to add depth and accuracy to her map, verifying her vector data against real-world details. At the end of her presentation, Marikka shared her final cartographic product with us!
The Avenza User Conference is an opportunity to discover exciting new developments with Avenza’s GIS and cartographic solutions and to connect with peers and Avenza team members. Avenza users and staffers from around the globe meet virtually each May to learn what’s new with Avenza Maps, MAPublisher, Geographic Imager, and the Avenza Map Store, and see how they are being used to map our world.
The Avenza User Conference is an free annual event that grows each year with incredible speakers and participants. Get inspired by mapping and industry professionals by joining us for #AvenzaUC2025. Find more information here about next year’s conference taking place on May 8th, 2025.
