Graphs and charts 1

[Sam577]

Hi,

Just a very general question: what's the best way to create charts and graphs in Illustrator -- by pasting from MS packages are starting from scratch in Illustrator?

Could anyone recommend any free online tutorials?

I'm not finding this as easy as I thought it would be.

I've pasted a few charts/graphs from Excel/PowerPoint and not had the results I expected.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks
Sam

 

[frainbreeze]

hello

what do you mean you pasted and the results werent as expected?

anyways, in my experience pasting has always workd, but if its not working for you then basic instructions on how to create the chart in illustrator (its pretty straight forward):

theres a Column Graph Tool (looks liek a bar chart) in the tool box, and if you hold it down then it'll expand to show you different types of charts.

draw the chart in the space/size you roughly want it, and then a box will pop up asking for chart info. you can either enter this manually or import it from an excel sheet or something.

hope that helps

 

[Sam577]

Hi,

Thanks for that. This is a typical example of the problems I am having. I try to enter the follwing data as a pie chart.

Press: 1,365,556
Radio: 5,554,529
Outdoor: 2,587,503
TV: 180,323
Direct Mail: 10,444,310

When I've done it, I press the tick (apply) and this error message appears:
Can't create the graph. A pie chart must contain non-zero data.

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks
Sam

 

[frainbreeze]

hello

is that in excel? i had no problems creating a pie chart with those values...make sure the numbers are being entered as numbers and not as text.

if thats in illustrator, make sure you have the column headings across the top, and the values underneath:
Press Radio Outdoor TV Direct Mail
12 10 4 5 66 99

etc etc.

 

[frainbreeze]

oh, and i just duplicated your error, try entering the numbers across the top and without the commas

 

[Sam577]

Thanks -- that worked!

Now that the data is displaying as a pie chart (in Illustrator), what's the best way to format the chart (i.e. make it look pretty, coloured segments etc.)

If I ungroup it, it loses its graphing capabilities but I can't seem to do much with it as a grouped object.

Thanks
Sam

 

[frainbreeze]

hello

if you hold down the white arrow (its beside the black arrow) to select a pie piece, then you can change the colour without ungrouping. the white arrow is called the group-selection tool, make sure you use the white arrow with a + in the top corner, this will ensure the key changes colour along with the corresponding pie piece.