ArcGIS SVG export | Christian Spanring

Because I was not entirely satisfied with the built-in SVG export option of ArcMap I wrote this short macro to do it my own way. The essential feature, compared to ArcMap’s built-in SVG export, is that I can define an (known) ID for every SVG element out of the attribute table. Thus I’m able to access my SVG elements later via JavaScript.

What the macro does:
- Exports all layers and features of your map document (mxd) to SVG
- Every layer will be preserved as SVG group
- Adds the values of the field “SVG_ID” of your attribute table to every SVG element as ID
- Units and extent are taken from the layer properties of ArcMap
- Produces clean SVG 1.1 code

What the macro does not:
- no formating – no colours, stroke-widths, etc. – everything will be visible as black in black (I just needed a clean SVG skeleton, graphic attributes I add later via interactivity)
- no HTML embedding, you get just the SVG code

If you think this can be useful for your purpose, just copy & paste the code of the text file into the Visual Basic Editor of ArcMap (Project/ArcMap Objects/ThisDocument) and hit run.

SVG-Export

josh

Thanks for posting this script, for me (GIS developer in the states) it was a convenient way to uncover the mystery of SVG. Just started looking around for a free extension for ArcGIS 9 (like SVGMapper for AV 3.x) and I’m realizing I’ll probably have to write my own. Thanks.
Irene

tried this script but it would not run, keeps asking me to define the SVG_ID for the shapefile.

what could be the problem here
http://spanring.eu/ Christian

You must add the field “SVG_ID” to your attribute table and put your desired IDs there.
Alex

Hi Christian,

What a simple, perfect script. Will be using it to generate “basemaps” for a basic server-side thematic map generator.

Best regards!

P.S. Str() and Val() in VBA are locale-invariant and eliminate a few headaches when you don’t know whether to expect 3,600.32 or 3600,32 !!
http://spanring.eu/ Christian

By using the rather dumb replace(string) I’m on the safe side and got the point where it should be