Tutorial – The 3D London Tube Map from Adobe Acrobat to 3DMax

Rapid visualisation of networks can be carried out by simply converting Adobe Acrobat documents to .dwg format as we detail below with a quick render of the London Tube map:

Modelling of the tube lines was possible using the following workflow:

1) Download a Acrobat formatted 2D map from the London Transport site;

2) Import into Adobe Illustrator;

3) Export as .DWG which preserves the vector line data;

4) Import into 3DMax and converting the line data into 3D Splines.

This provides a quick and easy way to transform a 2D map into 3D. A movie illustrating work in progress is embedded below:

The same technique can be used for the actual geographical location of the London Tube Network:

These are sample images of a file recently retrieved from a lost disk – we will be updating the 3D Map over the coming weeks.