Craeting charts

[Dibbler]

In the past 3 months I have finally moved from Lotus Freelance to Adobe Illustrator 10 to create professional looking charts in one step. But it appears as though the AI charting facility is relatively basic (for e.g. only unformatted data is recognised and it is not overly intuitive to create a bar-line chart on the same axis with a separate series on the right hand axis). Is there a plug-in which woudl significantly enhance the charting features? AI CS doesn't appear much stronger in this regard.

With thanks in advance
PHILIP

 

[Eggles]

Well you could try creating the charts in Excel (which is pretty good for this), converting it to PDF and then opening the PDF in Illustrator. You can then ungroup the elements and apply colours, fonts etc to anything you want.

 

[Dibbler]

Thank you. Your suggestion introduces another stage into creating the final chart. I was ideally looking for a single step solution from database/spreadsheet to a final print ready chart. Is there anything out there with regards to AI that can help, or is a step in the right direction?

 

[Eggles]

>>I was ideally looking for a single step solution from database/spreadsheet to a final print ready chart.<<

I don't personally know of any software that can accomplish this, but there probably is something, but it's not within Adobe/Microsoft. A rather nifty chart drawing app I used a few years ago (and is still available) is SmartDraw - however, I don't know if it is capable of producing graphics in CMYK mode - essential if the charts are to be commercially printed on offset presses. If this isn't an issue e.g. digital printer output, then Smartdraw may be worth trying, or any of the other apps listed when you google for 'chart drawing software'.