Redraws
rrcalbick
Newcomer
Okay, I've been working on a very large overland map for some time now. I am having consistent redraw issues to the point that I'm losing considerable time just trying to work on the map anymore. I have sheet effects off the vast majority of the time but still end up getting redraws if I try to inspect element properties, or switch my sheet or fill style. These lags add up to a lot of lost time. Yes, I realize this is a CAD style program that is not Photoshop (which I'm leaning more towards using at this point, I mean it's sad how much time I'm wasting for the map to reload). How can I improve this? Make the map smaller? That rather defeats the purpose.
Any suggestions? I'm a bit frustrated here to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I love the software, but the efficiency anymore is making it not worth the trouble...
Any suggestions? I'm a bit frustrated here to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I love the software, but the efficiency anymore is making it not worth the trouble...
Comments
Have you tried hiding some of the bitmap fills ?
- Keep effects off
- Go into the Speed settings dialog, and set the bitmap quality to a lower value
- Make sure to zoom into the area you work on. The less of the map that is in the window, the less will need to be redrawn
- Hide sheets/layers with lots of or complex entities when you don't need them.
- Don't overdo the detail level. Generally, if you make a continent map, avoid details/features that would only be visible on several magnifications of zoom, that is better added to a separate local map.
If you are still using CC3, then I would recommend updating to CC3+. It is much faster.
I create large overland and city maps with CC3+ with sheet effects ON and I do not have any major performance issue.
Sure, it does sometimes take a few seconds to redraw, but one can still work quite efficent on large maps. Even on vast maps with for example 24'000 buildings in a city map, it takes, of course, longer to redraw, but one can still maintain a reasonable workflow by adjusting to the circumstances, like avoiding unnecessary moves of the mouse wheel.
Cheers
One of the features of hatched fills in drawing tools is that they don't stay as fills, but are converted to individual entities in the drawing tool, meaning that they can't be trivially turned off.
I started with a very large overland map and ended up adding a lot of detail, i.e., a lot of symbols and background textures, rather than keeping things at a higher level and creating separate, more detailed maps. So all of those entities on the map, and backgrounds, and sheet effects, are the likely culprit. As Hadrian said, it is still possible to work in the file, some of the redraws just take a bit. I've learned to multitask while working in the file and try to make what I do more efficient to minimize the redraws. At any rate, the map is finished and I've learned some valuable lessons for future work.
I will say, some of my redraws are lengthy, more than 15 seconds, which seems odd to me. Yes the map is very large with a lot going on, but that still seems a bit out of the norm.
Excellent suggestion, thanks for the input! Lesson(s) learned on my part!
I am currently reworking the northern coastline of my world map (http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=6892&page=1#Item_16) and CC3+ got really slow when having the effects on, but I still needed them to be on, to properly see the coastal mountains. So I just turned off the effects for the "LAND" sheet and it worked with a reasonable speed... Well except when I tried to trace the coastline. It took more than a minute to get to the point I wanted to select as ending point.