Using Other Drawing Programs

(Note: This topic is badly out of date, but I believe the situation hasn't significantly changed with respect to SVG roundtripping as of July 2016.)

There are several popular drawing programs that have capabilities comparable to Adobe Illustrator. Unfortunately, among those alternatives only CorelDraw 12 offers significant support for the SVG format (as of early 2004). That support falls just short of allowing it to correctly read the SVG files written by Walls -- see note.  The most recent version of Xara X can now export SVG, but of course we also need import capability for roundtripping . An open source program, InkScape, which uses SVG as its native format, has been showing a great deal of promise. Already (as of 2008) it probably could be made to work with Walls without a great deal of effort on my part. The problem is that enough cave surveyors would have to be willing to adopt InkScape as their drawing program. You might want to check it out by browsing to www.inkscape.org.

For the time being the best workaround for those familiar with another program is to use Illustrator as a file converter only. I believe that recent versions of Xara X and Freehand (now from Adobe), can all read the Windows metafiles (WMF or EMF) exported by Walls. They can also write files that Illustrator can read (usually some variant of the AI or PDF format). Therefore I recommend the following procedure if you want to use a different program for the bulk of your drafting:

1) Export a line map from Walls as an EMF or WMF file featuring at least the survey vectors -- something that your drawing program can import. At the same time, perform the equivalent SVG export (identical view, scale, frame dimensions, and center coordinates), making sure that the adjustable option is selected. (See SVG Export Dialog.) Include all survey features (labels, notes, flags, etc.) in this export. As a precaution, also save a snapshot of the project using the ZIP backup feature.

2) After importing the metafile, use your drawing program to add artwork using survey lines (station marks and vectors) as a guide. If the program supports it, place drawn features into separate named layers as described in SVG Layer Definitions. I suggest you use similar but not identical names. (That's because Illustrator will automatically rename layers to insure uniqueness, a possible issue in step 4.)

3) When ready to create a final SVG map, or possibly an adjustable source SVG for Walls, export the document in any format that Illustrator can read without significant loss -- probably some variant of AI. Xara X, for example, will preserve the layer names in an AI export. The remaining steps must then be carried out by someone who has Illustrator.

4) Using Illustrator, import (or place) both the SVG file of step 1 and the AI file of step 3 into a new document. Delete the survey features originally supplied by the WMF file, since they are being replaced by the contents of the SVG file. At this point, it may be necessary to reorganize and rename certain layers so that they conform to the description in SVG Layer Definitions.

5) Write the new document as an SVG file as described in Instructions for Illustrator Users. Walls can then use the SVG in a merged export where new surveys are added and artwork is adjusted as necessary. If more decoration is needed, Illustrator can be used again to convert the updated SVG to a file your program can hopefully read. The process can then repeat, starting at step 2.

The SVG component of the Kaua North Maze sample project originated in the above fashion. A Walls-produced WMF file was imported into Xara X. After decoration with passage outlines, etc., an AI (version 7) document was produced for Illustrator 10.