Two Simple Questions I can't find on google...

mcg197

Hello all, I'm working with a couple ideas on how to do interesting contour work, modifying an idea presented on this forum before using blurred black and white lines.

I was curious if there was a way to achieve gradient coloring for a line in cc3+? If not, I could create a gradient from within GIMP and import it as a symbol, but it would be nice if there was a way to do it natively that I'm not aware of.

Secondly, this is a simple nooby question: How can I set the default sheet and layer for a symbol to be placed on? When I select my symbols it always changes my layers and sheets to something else and it's really quite a pain. It would speed up my mapping considerably to know how to change that default.

Thanks!

JimP

1) You can select any of the bitmap fills and use those to draw lines greater than zero width.

2) Symbols should be using the symbols sheet.

Someone more of an expert than me can likely give a better answer to number 2 than I can.

Monsen

No, CC3+ doesn't have a way to create a gradient, you'll need to use an external raster file as a fill or a symbol.

The default symbol sheet isn't a global default, but rather a per-symbol setting, allowing CC3+ to be set up with different symbols on different sheets. The default sheet for a symbol is stored individually for each symbol in the symbol catalog. To change this you need to edit the symbol catalog by loading it in to the main editor (as a map) instead of in the symbol catalog window. You can now open the symbol manager, and from there access, the properties of the symbols to change their sheet.

Note that I do not recommend you edit this, rather, take advantage of the naming scheme for sheets. Most symbols are set up to go to the SYMBOLS* sheet. Notice the asterisk. That basically means that if the currently active sheet starts with the text SYMBOLS they will be placed there, but if it doesn't, they go to SYMBOLS. You can take advantage of this and name your sheets things like SYMBOLS SECRET, SYMBOLS HIDDEN and whatever.

The layer setting is controlled by the symbol catalog setting, and is set when you load in the symbol catalog. You can see this setting for each of your catalogs by clicking Symbol Catalog Settings then clicking Advanced. Now pick any symbol catalog setting in the list and then click properties to control what layer that catalog uses.

mcg197

@Monsen Thank you that was highly illustrative and exactly the key I was missing. I find the defaults have more layers than I would like, and I must have had inconsistent behavior with this because sometimes I was using SYMBOL* named sheets and another time I did not.

I will go ahead and give this a try and see if that helps fix my issues, rather than modifying the symbol catalog settings.

Thank you!