LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

April 2003, vol. 93, no. 4.

Technology, Introducing Illustrator, by Kevin Jordan. ppg 66-71

 

...review and perspective by Madis Pihlak:

Sunday, April 6, 2003

Penn State landscape architecture students regularly use Illustrator for presentation board layout to send to our large plotter. Illustrator is a versatile software program, which I always wondered why more landscape architects did not use this program.

The opening statement of the article however cannot go unchallenged.  I should state that I have made a career out of promoting CAD alternatives to AutoCAD.  So the opening statement that "nearly all design firms" use AutoCAD is simply untrue.  There are as many as 140 alternatives to AutoCAD.  But this opening statement is really the sub text to a well-written article by a non-landscape architect.

The graphic artist author is promoting the use of Illustrator, a vector based illustration software program.  If you are reading this web log you probably already know the difference between vector and raster graphics. The key point is that vector graphics can be enlarged endlessly without loss of image quality.  Raster images such as the images produced by Photoshop are made of tiny dots or pixels.  When you enlarge a raster image you eventually lose image quality.

The essence of Illustrator is that you have greater graphic control over the image a particular useful set of features is the DXF and map plug in which reads Arc 8 shape files from all Esri products.

It is great to see LAM continuing to publish article dealing with creative use of software programs. I for one take issue with some of the statements and the diagrammatic quality of the introductory image.

Madis Pihlak ASLA

Penn State University

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