CorelDRAW used for making the 2004 Edition of the Standard Highway Sign Book, then the document was converted to PDF to make it useful for the public.
Below is an excerpt from a discussion group on the FHWA web site
Henry Mikiewicz, URW America, Inc.,
05/22/2006
Samual, with all due respect. One can just as easily use Coreldraw, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, Flexisign or SignLab to accurately produce a full range of FHWA compliant traffic control signs. You simply need to know how to go about it. How do I know this? Well, the FHWA Standard Highway Signs Manual (2000 Millennium thru 2004 Edition) was created with CorelDraw. We did the work and we have an accurate and up to date library of full size, pre-made traffic control signs ready for fabrication. By the way, type A and B overhead guide signs can be laid out as well. The beauty of this approach is in the flexibility these programs allow the user and their robust ability to output files to the broadest range of (roll-fed, flat-bed) plotter cutters. Sure you can pay alot more for less, but why?
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Re: Sign Cad vs Guide Sign
Bobby H
05/27/2006
Yes, one can quite easily see the SHS book was produced with CorelDRAW -by way of the PDF creator used. In Acrobat Reader, go to File Menu, check Document Properties and see the Description tab. It should tell what application was used to create the PDF, be it CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Acrobat Professional, AutoCAD or any number of other applications capable of outputting PDF. I'm a sign designer mainly for commercial businesses and use a variety of vector-based applications for creating the artwork. I do a great deal of that work in CorelDRAW X3 and Adobe IllustratorCS2. I then use FlexiSign 7 and EnRoute3D for making the actual cutting/routing files. CorelDRAW is especially well featured for handling technical drawing chores for its wealth of anchor point editing tools (many of which Adobe Illustrator sorely lacks). Its pretty easy to do things like create sets of corrected fractions out of ClearviewHwy