Working with tiger data, best applications, methods, suggestions????

For my own use at first, possibly commercially later, I want to be
able to use the U.S. Census tiger data ro create my own maps.

I am mostly interested in city and counry boundries and detailed
street names down to the block level (quite a few street names).

I am experimenting with a plug in for Adobe Illustrator, MAPublisher.
(MAPublisher Version 6.2 with Illustrator CS2, and I also have
MAPublisher 4.0 working with Illustrator 8.01 and Illustrator 9.0)

If I import the .RT1 file from the tiger set there is so much data
that Illustrator chokes. Especially Illustrator CS2. (I am on a
Windows XP system, Pentium 4, 1GB RAM). I still have only boundry and
street paths but the street names appear only in the map attributes
pallet. I will / would have to manually key in each street name. Using
this file, I also get many unwanted paths (creeks, rivers, ponds,
etc...)

Is there any way to import and place these street names text, other
than typing them in??

I have a program that will convert these .RT1 files to .shp sets
(including the supporting files, .dbf and .shz)

I can then get a .shp file for any or all layers. TGRxxxxxxlinks.shp
seems to be the one I need for street paths as opposed to
TGRxxxxxxall.shp, which, again has too much info.

I guess that I need some help in the form of comments regarding:

(1) Is anybody else using Illustrator in mapping, with success?

(2) What might be a better program or a better way to create street
maps using tiger data?

Any help appreciated.

jbl

jbl,

I think you need a better converter. I've used TGR2SHP from GISTools
before, and it merged all of the alternate names into the shp file for the
roads. I've collected info about a number of converters on my web site.
Check out http://www.tigergis.com/converters.html . Any links to other
converters will be added to the list. Send them along.

I've never used MapPublisher, but if you've got shp files there are LOTS of
tools that will use them. I think MapPublisher is really geared towards
getting your maps on paper. If its digital you want you should probably
start out in a proper gis system and use MapPublisher to get the results on
paper once you reach that point.

Good luck,

Marc Pelletier
TigerGis.com