# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Software Discussion >  Ortelius Map Illustration Software for Mac OS X

## drjill

Mapdiva, LLC celebrates the first release of Ortelius map illustration software for Mac OS X with a special offer ($79 until September 30th). Ortelius is a vector-based drawing program made especially for map design and presentation. Ortelius offers a creative solution for floor plans, landscape plans, scaled drawings, and a wide variety of high quality custom maps.

Designed for incredible ease-of-use, it allows you to draw directly with features such as roads, rivers, coastlines, buildings, symbols, and contours.

Ortelius’ many styles and symbols are fully scalable vector graphics, including special symbols for recreation, cultural and natural features, transportation, and much more. Every drawing feature supports map attribute information, such as feature names, that can be quickly referenced by Ortelius' intelligent text labeling system. Trace and draw over scanned maps and images, import GIS data from shapefiles, and make maps from included templates.

Features of Ortelius Standard Edition: 
* Scalable maps and plans 
* Drag-and-drop interface 
* Dozens of fully editable map templates 
* Smooth vector graphics 
* Automatic junctions and style transitions 
* Hundreds of styles and symbols 
* WYSIWYG drawing and editing 
* 20+ special drawing tools  

More About Ortelius Map Illustration Software: Ortelius software is designed as a dedicated map graphics program for Mac OS X. Ortelius Standard Edition is available for $99 (USD). Introductory pricing of $79 is available until Sept 30, 2009. A free trial download is available from their website www.mapdiva.com/ortelius.

Mapdiva makes mapping easier. Founded in 2008, Mapdiva, LLC offers creative mapping software for Mac OS. Mapdiva, LLC has offices in Indianapolis, IN USA and Armidale, NSW Australia.

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## craggles

This is a great tool for graphic designers to create maps for brochures and websites for clients. It's output is simple (which is needed for the end user to understand the map without the information overload found in Ordnance Survey maps), the edibility of the maps you create is excellent and it's very quick and easy to get great results! The feature list is unbelievably amazing cutting the creation time down significantly and making any edits bewilderingly fast. I would not have dreamed an app like this would every be possible in my wildest dreams!

I'm strongly considering it because I need to do a lot of maps of this nature for clients. I currently use Illustrator and although I'm good and pretty fast in Illustrator, this would save a whole lot of time and reduce the complexity meaning I'd be able to hand the creation of maps to someone not as experienced in Illustrator and still get great results!

I'm not sure of it's relevance here though as it's very specific on the type of map it can create - a simplified 'You are here'/'how to get to us' type of map and not a fantasy/sci fi type of map. Don't get me wrong, it's *amazing* at 'You are here'/'how to get to us' maps that are very easy to understand but it'd work for fantasy maps if there were extra symbols and terrane effects. The simplified output is good to large campaign or smaller adventure maps that are easy to understand and very descriptive I suppose but for me, most of the fun is in creating some olde worlde type of map that's very stylised for adventurers that's either antique or satellite looking.

That's merely my opinion though and as I said, this is going to be seriously considered (and a no-brainer purchase if it was ever on maczot, mupromo, macheiste etc as part of a bundle or an individual item)!  :Wink:

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## mearrin69

Looks awesome. I'd check it out if I had a Mac.
M

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## drjill

Hi, I thought I'd share this family-history inspired map I made while testing for our latest round of Ortelius. It's the first I've made with a few of our developing Hills & Mountains symbol set - this one has a nice subtle effect (more to come on those). I've also worked in a new river style using our tapered stroke style component _(if you're interested here's a link to the post with the PDF map and links to sources of some great historical maps)_.  :Smile:

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