Best Way to Map Real World England in CC3

[Redrobes]

I have made a high res black and white England map (and Wales too since the Romans were all over that as well) and traced it in inkscape to DXF and put them both in a ZIP file. Small version as thumbnail attachment. Maybe this will be useful ?

[Mouse]

Oh that's enormously sweet of you Red - and so useful for a whole load of mappers out here.

I just love this place

[EpicBradley129]

Yeah that's very nice of you Redrobes, thanks. I really love how everyone on this forum is so friendly and helpful. That image of England would be very useful, but I'm actually using a map that I pulled off Wikipedia since it shows major rivers that I can trace too. But really, thanks.

So I started tracing the east coast of England, doing little segments at a time and combining each one to the ones before as I completed them. For a while that worked fine, but now when I combine two segments, the two ends of the single combined segment get connected by a straight line, so that the entire thing forms a closed shape. Can anyone tell me why this is suddenly happening, and how I can stop it from happening?

[Mouse]

Can't really say exactly what the problem is without seeing it in picture form, and even then its not a given thing that I'll recognize it, but it could be one of two things.

a) The lines are connecting in the direction they were drawn, so if you draw one from left to right and the next one back along the coast toward the end of the first one, they will connect with a straight line between the end of each line - connecting the wrong way around. If you pay attention to the Command line at the bottom of the screen as you do the connection you will see that you can reverse the direction of either line by pressing the appropriate button on the keyboard if things aren't connecting right.

b) for some reason you may be accidentally clicking the wrong tool from the drop down. I do it sometimes when I'm a bit tired, but there's always undo

If looking at those two things doesn't help, we may have to take this over to Profantasy Forum where you can upload the FCW file directly so I can have a look and see what's going wrong for you

[EpicBradley129]

Ah ok I see, I was connecting the lines in the wrong order. I was drawing all the lines in the same direction, but I had started to click the new line and then the old line, instead of the old line and then the new line. As long as I click on the lines in the order I draw them, it works fine. Thank you very much!

[Mouse]

You're welcome! LOL! Its not an easy thing to describe - I was thinking we would need to do a few example diagrams to show each other what we were talking about, but if you've sorted it out that's great

[EpicBradley129]

Hey so I've run into the same problem as before, i.e., I joined line segments in the wrong order and now there's an awkward straight line running through my map, but now I find myself unable to undo the "combine paths" function to get rid of that straight line. I think what happened was that I combined the lines in the wrong order, didn't see the straight line, and then saved the map before I saw the mistake. Apparently once you save you can't undo any previous actions? So anyway, now I'm stuck with this awkward straight line running through my map and I'm wondering if there is another way to undo the "combine paths" function. I've tried the "erase," "break," "split," and "explode" functions and maybe a few others, but so far nothing is working. With the map zoomed all the way out, the line is noticeable but not super obvious, so it doesn't ruin the entire map, but I'd really rather not have it at all.

[Mouse]

Ok - you wouldn't be the first person to miss something like that and save an error

The two lines you joined are now a single line, and can be treated as just one entity. Use the break line tool to break the line into three pieces at both ends of the error.

When you have done that you should be able to pick the bit of the line you don't want with the eraser tool without touching the original correct bits of line. Then you can join them again in the right order

If that doesn't work, please could you show me a screen shot of the problem? Thanks

[EpicBradley129]

Ok, so I used the break tool to break off most of the offending straight line, and then I used the erase tool to erase it, but nothing happened. The straight line should have disappeared, but it just didn't. Then I actually pressed undo and that straight line did disappear, except for the very ends of it which remained, but were small enough to be unnoticeable with the map zoomed out. Also, the part of the coastline that I had traced most recently and then joined to the rest of the coastline was now separated from the rest of the coastline for some reason. When I tried to rejoin that trace to the rest of the coastline, in the correct order, I still got that same straight line. When I pressed undo and tried rejoining the trace in a different order, I got another, different straight line that was even bigger. So apparently that part the coast that I traced is just broken somehow, and I'd just like to delete it and do it over, but again the erase tool won't make it disappear. So how do I make that segment of the trace disappear?

Actually, I tested out the erase tool on other lines I drew randomly on the map, and it won't make anything disappear. Am I not using that tool correctly? Is there something more I have to do than just clicking the line I want to erase, right clicking, then clicking "Do it"?

[Mouse]

You may be being fooled by the lack of automatic refresh. Sometimes lines that have been erased may still appear to be there until you make the screen refresh. I usually just zoom or move around, but you can click the refresh button (the double blue arrows at the top right of the toolbar near the zoom tools). See if that works.

The trouble is that I can't see what you are talking about to be much help if it isn't just the lack of automatic refresh causing the problem. Are you able to upload a screen shot?

As a general tool tip - When using any of the tools, if things don't seem to be happening according to your expectations of what should happen next, its always best to check what the message in the command line is saying at that precise moment in time