Glen

No worries. Yeah i ended up making arrows by using overlapping rectangles and the 'snap to' function. The program literally does everything i could want, i'm going to recommend it to our lecturer as a much better substitute for Powerpoint 2007. Thanks again for your help!

Yeah ive been playing around with it and its pretty much exactly what i needed. The only thing that held me back from getting the free trial for corel draw was that it only lasted 30 days and i would rather not be put under the added pressure of completing it in that time. My friend who used corel draw said that he had trouble creating the symbols i outlined in my previous post as the pre-set arrows etc were not quite right. any ideas on how to create custom arrows etc? Cheers

Thanks for the reply, During the summer I did a mapping project in which geological units were plotted with the use of GPS onto a topographic basemap. The units are delineated by boundaries which may be either observed (solid line) or inferred (dashed line), and the basemaps include information such as fold hinge orientation denoted by an annotated arrow (precisely rotated), foliation orientation denoted by an annotated line with a smaller line (tick) bisecting it (again rotation needs to be precise) and other features such as faults which displace the geological boundaries. Basically in order to create a neat copy geological map i need to scan the basemaps into a suitable program without scaling, then trace over the relevant information on the basemap. The geological units need to have a transparent fill colour in order to see topography on a clean basemap below the trace. Powerpoint enabled me to do all of these funtions, however, in order to create a shape for fill colour i used the free form function which automatically finished the shape when i zoomed in or out. This was a major problem as in order to get a good enough quality of trace around the units i had to zoom in, but was then not able to scroll or zoom out to view the continuation of the shape due to the auto complete.... irritation Hours were lost but i managed to complete a reasonable copy for a project in my 2nd year, however, the finished product is not an acceptable standard for my dissertation needs. I hope that answers your question about the use of Powerpoint 2007. This is a link to a picture showing the standard of finish i need to acheive http://www.geo.brown.edu/People/Grads/abt/Photos/Kygyzstan/Lenin'sFoldMap.jpg I am in the process of trying inkscape so i will get back to you. Thank you

Hey everyone,<br style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(248, 250, 252); ">I am working on my dissertation/ mapping project at the moment and i am about to start creating my neat copy geological map. Previously i have used powerpoint 2007 which basically did the job but had its limitations. ive heard that corel draw and adobe illustrator are pretty good but i wanted to get some feedback about any limitations the programs might have, so if you have any experience in either of the programs ive mentioned, or can recommend any other programs then i would appreciate it.<br style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(248, 250, 252); ">Thanks

Hey everyone, I am working on my dissertation/ mapping project at the moment and i am about to start creating my neat copy geological map. Previously i have used powerpoint 2007 which basically did the job but had its limitations. ive heard that corel draw and adobe illustrator are pretty good but i wanted to get some feedback about any limitations the programs might have, so if you have any experience in either of the programs ive mentioned, or can recommend any other programs then i would appreciate it. Thanks