Problem tracing coastline and contour lines

smhollingsworth

I am trying to draw regions on a map I made following the One Day Worldbuilder tutorial (not sure if that part is relevant). Using the Border Closed tool, I have found that I can trace the rivers that came over from FT3, but I cannot trace coastlines or contour lines; it's as if the Border Closed tool doesn't recognize that there is an entity when I click on one of those two. I can, however, select the coastline or contour lines for other actions, such as to erase it or change its properties, so I don't think it's a matter of me clicking in the wrong place. I have tried other drawing tools that offer the trace capability and none of those work either. Is there something I need to do to make trace work on the coastline or contour lines?

Shessar

It sounds like the thing you are trying to trace may not be on the sheet and/or layer that CC3 expects it to be on.

- Start the draw tool that you are using to run the trace from and look to see which sheet and layer it uses.
-Then execute a List from the Info menu on the entity that you want to trace to make sure it is the same.
-If not do a Change Properties on it to move it to the correct sheet/layer and try the trace again.

Loopysue

The export from ODW is a multipoly. They can't be traced unless you first explode the multipoly. I would be careful doing that, though, since you will lose the ability to work on all the bits of the same contour at the same time, which can be confusing. Exploding multipolies can also have unexpected results - things can end up on other sheets and layers and have completely different fills. You may also lose sight of any depressions or lakes you have.

If you really want to explode them it might be better to move them all to their own individual layers so that you can hide all but the one you want to trace, and then explode it. I suggest layers here instead of sheets because otherwise you will end up with a sheet list that has 30 new sheets. While this is ok for some, for others it might be a bit of a nightmare. It depends how you prefer to separate the levels.

An alternative would be to duplicate the entire set onto a temporary sheet, explode the temporary set, and have both contour sheets showing so that you can judge by eye from the original visual reference, but also have the new exploded polys ready for the tracing.

smhollingsworth

Thanks for responses! I suspected there might be something with the contours that was causing the issue.

After reading many (so, so many) posts on using maps from FT3 in CC3+ and TRACE (and how it's not the same as "trace"), I think I was approaching things in the wrong way. I'm following the Castle Oldskull World Generator guide and wanted to split up my map into regions before I started more detailed mapping. That works great for paper maps, where it's more time-consuming to make changes, but I don't think it's ideal for something like Campaign Cartographer. It seems (to me, anyway), that creating smaller maps of areas and adding in all the natural features first, and then defining civilized/wilderness areas, makes more sense. Especially for rather large areas; the main play area I have defined so far is 5500 miles x 4100 miles. So, I'm taking a different approach. I'm thinking I will do the following (which may have extraneous steps):

1. Export view from FT3 into CC3+
2. Color map in CC3+ as in Worldbuilder tutorial
3. Export coastlines from FT3
4. Fill coastlines in CC3+
5. Use colored map as a guide to map natural features
6. Decide where to place civilized and wilderness regions