Maps in Microsoft Word

[ravells]

Just for a laugh I made maps/deckplans using the draw tools in Mircrosoft Word. If you don't ask it for too much it produces a working result...

[Shadowfane]

That's actually pretty cool, Ravells! How long did it take, vs say using CC3?

[ravells]

If you are not after anything elaborate the workflow in MS Word is actually faster.

You can set a grid snap to make placing objects easier. MS Word also has aligning and distributing commands (which I don't think CC2 has) and smart objects which you can adjust 'on the fly' by using a single manipulator button on the object itself. Where it falls down is in drawing polygons with combinations of curves and straight lines and of course the fill patterns are rather limited.

I was playing / experimenting when I was making the maps / plans, but I think you could churn each of them out in under an hour.

Ravs

[RPMiller]

HEY! Those are pretty good for just being native Word. I hadn't ever considered that. Thanks for the samples I actually have an immediate use for that sort of thing.

[ravells]

No worries. Oftentimes we get so hooked on buying the 'best possible' software that we overlook that stuff we already have may be suitable for our needs.

The added bonus with using MS Word's drawing package is that you don't have to worry about anti-aliasing, sizing etc if you ultimately want to drop the map into a word document.

Be warnred, however that the draw rate slows down a lot once you have a lot of polygons on the screen (which is weird for vector art which I always thought was meant to be quicker than raster).

Ravs