Enquiry: Meet with prospective client and gather general information needed for proposal and quote. Questions include:

• How will the map serve the client?
• Who are the intended users and how will they use the map?
• Date needed.
• Map extent (area to be shown). Must include places. Might include places.
• General and special information to be shown (esp. any 'non-standard' information.
• Preferred style, color scheme. Are there examples?
• Publishing medium (e.g., offset press, digital printer, screen print, web)
• Number of copies.

Proposal & Quote: Detailed, proposal and cost estimate - possibly including several options. This may require one or more revisions before it's exactly right.

Contract: Approved proposal formalized in a contract.

Project Setup Initialize project notes & required project directories & files.

Design: Complete working project specification & shop mockup.

Data Gathering/Survey/Research: Obtain and make sense of all the information needed for the map. Often significant effort here. Don't underestimate.

Data Compilation

• PC Base Data: Polaris in-house database.
• Government Sources: Obtain, convert format, spatial reference.
• Commercial Sources: Purchase, convert format, spatial reference.
• Research/Survey: as required

• Merge/Clip:
• Classify: as required for project
• Extract Data: layers for project
• Clean:
• Generalize
• Extract Labels: as required
• Create Indices: as required

• Imagery: e.g., aerial photographs, satellite images, panchromatic, multispectral
• Terrain: e.g., contours, hachure, hillshade, colorshade
• Landcover:
• Boundaries: e.g., state, county, city, public/private land
• Hydrography: e.g., lakes, swampland, rivers & streams
• Transportation:
• Highways (e.g., Interstate, US Hwy)
• Major Roads (State roads & major public connecting roads)
• Small Roads - (e.g., County roads, forest service, private roads, trails
• Railroads
• Powerlines/pipelines
• Point Locations: e.g., cities and towns, landmarks, points of interest

Render Setup: elevation model, vector laters, colormap

Terrain Manipulation: ala Heinrich Beran & Eduard Imhof

Test Renderings: determine optimum terrain distortion, position, lighting, haze, etc.

Final Renderings: render layers to assemble for final image; color, shade, depth map, sky, overlays

Image Postprocessing: merge rendered layers, add texture, manual edits

Process Images: e.g., terrain, landcover, image background image

Vector Data Import:, DTP doc layering MP import/processing,

Vector Data Processing & edits: convert polylines to bezier curves, smooth, manual edits

Assign Color/Style: all map layers

Process labels and symbols: FH search/replace, etc.

Hand Typesetting:

Finishing Touches: create index, scale, legend, etc.

Setup: e.g., page layout, color pallette, stylesheet, DTP document structure.

Map Placement:

Typesetting/copy writing:

Image placement/edits:

Artwork/Photography: placement/edits:

Technical Graphics/Illustrations: creation/placement/edits:

In-house Draft: produce/review/revise

First Draft: produce/deliver/revise

Final Draft: produce/deliver/revise

Prepress/Final Delivery:

Clean up: temporary and extraneous files

Portfolio: versions of the map for web site, CD

Archive: transfer project to CD, project data to PC base