Layers in exported pdf files

[jlertola]

It would be helpful if Geocart put vector lines from each database on its own layer and named the layer with the name of the database when exporting pdf files. When I open pdf files in Illustrator that has a lot of databases in it, it is hard to tell which lines are which.

-Joe Lertola

[pmessmer]

Hi Joe. This was precisely the functionality that we had wanted to implement, but it was non-obvious how to create a PDF file that was annotated properly so that Illustrator would show content with named layers when importing it. For the initial release I settled on creating a separate transparency group for each database (so you can still see the structure in Illustrator, and drag the groups into new layers manually). This is less than ideal (particularly because the groups do not have names, as you note) and the best workflow presently is to toggle their visibility manually to determine which transparency group corresponds to which database. I would love to improve upon this; if you know of (non-Adobe) applications that write PDF files that import into Illustrator with named layers (or have examples of such PDFs), please let us know.