The problem of map expansion
Hello
I'm trying to make a map of an entire world with room for several large continents, so I set it up to be 12,000 in height and 18,000 in width (assuming the numbers correspond to miles). I am working on just one continent at the moment, so I am zooming way in (my grids are set at each grid being 100 miles). But when I draw the outline of my continent at this scale, even zoomed in, I end up with really fat lines for everythng from rivers to roads to borders and even the coast. Is there any way to shrink the size of your lines and contours when you're zoomed in and working on a small part of a very large map?
To put my question another way, how can I draw in a river that's not 20 or more miles wide as per my map scaling. I can't figure out how to make the lines the program uses to draw roads, rivers etc. thinner.
Thank for support.
I'm trying to make a map of an entire world with room for several large continents, so I set it up to be 12,000 in height and 18,000 in width (assuming the numbers correspond to miles). I am working on just one continent at the moment, so I am zooming way in (my grids are set at each grid being 100 miles). But when I draw the outline of my continent at this scale, even zoomed in, I end up with really fat lines for everythng from rivers to roads to borders and even the coast. Is there any way to shrink the size of your lines and contours when you're zoomed in and working on a small part of a very large map?
To put my question another way, how can I draw in a river that's not 20 or more miles wide as per my map scaling. I can't figure out how to make the lines the program uses to draw roads, rivers etc. thinner.
Thank for support.
Comments
Making a large are map such as a world map down to an intricate detail level in one map is generally discouraged for several reasons:
- Performance. CC3+ isn't a painting program where only the number of pixels count, and it doesn't change anything to color them. In CC3+, every entity and every node added costs performance. This isn't normally a problem because CC3+ is well optimized, but there are limits. Adding too much detail to a map is a good way of finding these limits, which can result in poor performance, or in the worst case, crashes (depends on exactly how far you go)
- Map appearance. When you make a world map with tons of tiny details, the world map itself when not zoomed in tend to look messy, because there is just too much stuff fighting for space to be shown. CC3+ doesn't work like google maps where you see less details as you zoom out, everything will be there, only tiny.
- Mapping Fatigue. Most people starting out this way never finish their map, they get tired of all the details long before they are halfway through, because that work gets tedious when you commit to making your whole world very detailed. And a unfinished map is wasted work.
Instead, I highly recommend taking the approach we've taken in the community atlas. Make the world map without overdoing the details, then make the continent maps as separate maps with a higher detail level, and then make more detailed maps out of the interesting sections of the continents (I recommend the approach taken in the atlas to map interesting areas, rather than a "grid" approach where everything is intended to be mapped to the exact detail level and line up along the edges, because these gridded partitions often end up with huge uninteresting areas, and other interesting areas needlessly split in half).
As to your actual question.
The drawing tools are generally sett up to make line widths in percentages of the map width (they're made with the principles I mention above in mind). You can easily fix this by editing the drawing tools, or better yet, make a copy of them, and then edit and use the copy. To do this, simply hit the All Map Drawing Tools
Note that some tools also have an outline, this is edited by hitting the outline button instead of the properties button, and assuming it is set up with an extra entity as an outline, hit the properties button in this new dialog (if it isn't set up as an extra entity, then don't change it).
When done, hit the Save button to save the changes to your tool.
As an alternative, you can also use the basic drawing commands from the right hand toolbars, these all obey the properties you have set on the status bar, so just set these first, then use a basic smooth line for the river for example.