Misc: How to make a transit map

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Entry posted by kj3400 · December 6, 2011

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Some people have been asking me how I make my maps, so here you go...

Mass Transit Map Tutorial

Ever marvel at the subway and rail line maps in CJs and wonder how they’re made? Want to make one yourself? They’re not as hard as you might think.

For starters you’re going to need Inkscape. It’s a free image editing program that you can find on its self named site, inkscape.org.

At this point you have two options: if you know the route of the lines you want to map, you can skip down to where it says “Inkscape time.” However, if you want an accurate map, or have no clue where you laid those tracks, you should do this step.

If you want to map rail lines, which tend to span more than a single tile, you might want to also download Region Census, which will produce a map you can edit. After opening your region in Region Census, you can save its image.

If you are only mapping a single tile, or mapping subway/light rail/el-rail lines, then you should start SC4, as subway lines don’t show up on the region view. Open the tile the lines are in. For this tutorial I’m going to use one of my cities with established light rail/subway/el-rail lines, Paradise City.

paradise_city-apr._15__871322982453.png

Open the traffic data view. At this point I’m making the assumption that you’ve had the latest NAM installed so you should have the traffic volume data view. After switching to the subway volume data view, take a pic of it:

As you can see my lines are being used as much as they could be so they’re pretty dim. That won’t be a problem though.

Inkscape time.

After closing SC4, open up Inkscape, and open the pic file. You might have to enlarge it so it’s a reasonable size. If you do enlarge it, make sure you click the lock button so the pic enlarges proportionally.

Next comes the part where we make the lines. Using the Bezier tool (the tool that looks like a pen, under the pencil tool, which looks like—you guessed it—a pencil), simply trace the rail/subway lines over. Start with one line, and just click where the line curves from diagonal to orthogonal. When you get to the end of a line click at the end and press enter. This will create a almost nonexistent black line:

Now this is the part where you can be creative. After creating the line, click your cursor where it shows the color of the stroke, which should be black as default (in the bottom left corner). A window will pop up.

If you click the third tab, that says Stroke Style, you can customize the line. First, you might actually want to see it, so increase the width by inserting a number or by clicking the up arrow until your desired width appears. Anything above 5 usually works for me, though you’re free to experiment. See what works for you. Now you can customize the line. You can change how the line turns corners, under Join, and whether the line dashes or not; useful for lines under construction, or lines with special functions (part time lines for instance). After you’ve finished that, you can change its color (unless you want all black lines) by a) clicking the Stroke paint tab and choosing a spot on the color wheel (change the basic color by clicking on the outside of the wheel, and click in the triangle to change the lightness of the color, or b) hold SHIFT down and click one of the colors on the bottom of the window.

After you’ve drawn lines to your heart’s content, you should take the time to adjust the lines as they usually tend to come out crooked. Just click on the nodes (the diamond shapes at each corner) and move them until they line up the way you want them to. it’s time to add the stations. They can be added by adding circles or squares in the spots where the stations are on the train lines.

To make it easier, if you get a particularly nice looking circle or square you can make copies by selecting it and pressing CTRL, then D. This will create a duplicate shape directly on top of the first one. Just move the duplicate off and the original will stay where you copied it. If you want rounded squares, draw a square and this should appear:

Just move the circles around for you desired roundness.

At this point you’ll want to move the data view pic, its work is done now. Just click anywhere on it and hit the delete button.

To add names, simply click the text tool (button with the A), and click where you want to type… and type. Change the font and size where, in my pic it says "Segoe UI" and 38

You can also change the size of text by clicking the regular cursor (the arrow) on text and use the arrows to change it that way.

If you want, you can add a legend, with the steps I just taught you, and add special symbols, either by making them, or importing them (click the arrow pointing into the rectangle):

To finish, make sure you export the file by clicking the button next to the import button. This is optional but you can also save your file as a .svg file so you can modify it later.

And there you have the basics on how to make a rail/subway map. I know I missed a bit, but if you have any questions just let me know.

Enjoy!