Questions on older versions of map files and converting

Calan

Hi there,

Newbie to CC. I have a licence for CC3+, which I've just begun learning (and am really getting into). I also recently licenced the Hârn Kanday Electronic Atlas from Columbia Games, as I understood the map files it came with could be edited in CC3+, and I was interested in digging into them to see how CG used CC to design their maps.

But while I can open and edit them, I've since read that these are actually CC2 files. Yet I'm not clear how to confirm this, as they all seem perfectly editable to me - I can add sheets and embed the custom colour palette used in the maps, save and reopen just fine.

I'm not clear if going through the Conversion process is essential to making these 'proper' CC3+ files, or if Conversion just does some automated clean-up, like adding the default sheets and moving entities into them. I'm getting a strong feeling it's the latter, but want to be sure.

So, a couple of questions.

Is it possible to see the version of a CC file? (If I do need to convert, from what I gather from the Conversion window, I'm meant to specify whether the file is being converted from CC2 Pro or CC3.)

Does using the Conversion process on a CC2 or CC3 file actually do anything beyond what I could do if I just manually 'converted' it by adding sheets etc to the file?

Thanks!

jslayton

The FastCAD file format is backwards compatible (that is, CC3 will open CC2 files, but CC2 won't correctly open CC3 files). When the system is asking which conversion setting to use, it's asking for set of rules to apply to the file.

The conversion process applies the rules from a file in @system\converters to convert the CC2 drawing to a CC3 drawing. These rules include setting the template and style information in the drawing, adding required sheets, and moving entities on the specified layers to the new sheets. The process also adds the master CC3 entity, updates fill styles from the template, and ungroups symbol definitions. You can probably do all of these actions by hand (there are some adjustments to the master record that look like they might be hard to do by hand), but it's usually better to use automated tools if possible to avoid forgetting things. You would probably want to let the conversion process do its tasks because part of those tasks is ensuring that the sheet structure will work correctly with the CC3+ drawing tools.

I don't see anything that would cause too much problem if applied to a CC3 drawing. It might scale some vector fill styles strangely if applied again. I do recommend always making a copy of the drawing before doing any conversion-type things.

I think that you can get the database version number of a file by using Notepad to open the FCW file (Make a copy of your drawing to be safe, then open the file in Notepad by right-clicking on it in Explorer and using Open With, read the text on the first line, and close Notepad without saving). The files should all start with "FCW (FastCAD for Windows) " and a number. CC3 is "6.20.0". I'm not sure what the number would be for CC2 because I haven't seen one of those files for a long time.

Monsen

The Kanady maps are CC2 Pro maps.

The important differences here is that converting a CC2 Pro map tries to figure out which sheets the entities belong on by looking at their layer, then create the appropriate sheet and move the entities. This is a best-effort process, which may need some manual work before everything is ready.

The conversion of CC3 maps is mostly telling the maps that bitmap resources are now found in a separate data directory instead of the installation directory as was the case with CC3.

As Joe says, the CC is backwards compatible, and you don't need to convert your maps at all to use them, although if you want to take advantage of new CC3 features like sheet effects, you will need to convert them (manually or automatically) so you actually have entities on sheets to apply effects to, but there is no magic in the conversion routines that you cannot do manually, it's more making it a bit easier.

jslayton

The templates reference the hash (#) path rather than at (@) path due to the age of the converters (they probably haven't been touched since CC3 first came out). The # in the paths should be @. The age of the converters may mean that some templates no longer distributed with CC3+. If you want to make your own converter, I recommend picking a suitable template that you want to use as a destination. If the template is found (and only if the template file is successfully loaded), the conversion process will copy over fill styles, set up some suitable scaling factors, and set the default draw tools style specified by Style=. If the template isn't loaded (for example, if the path is wrong or the template doesn't exist), the style won't be set.

The $ and # on replacement names indicate a priority ordering: $ rules are applied to symbol references, # rules are applied to text, and rules without designators are applied to any entities where a rule hasn't taken effect yet (which may include symbols and text).

If you do make your own converter, make sure to keep a backup somewhere just in case you might want it again in the future.

jslayton

The FastCAD file format is backwards compatible (that is, CC3 will open CC2 files, but CC2 won't correctly open CC3 files). When the system is asking which conversion setting to use, it's asking for set of rules to apply to the file.

The conversion process applies the rules from a file in @system\converters to convert the CC2 drawing to a CC3 drawing. These rules include setting the template and style information in the drawing, adding required sheets, and moving entities on the specified layers to the new sheets. The process also adds the master CC3 entity, updates fill styles from the template, and ungroups symbol definitions. You can probably do all of these actions by hand (there are some adjustments to the master record that look like they might be hard to do by hand), but it's usually better to use automated tools if possible to avoid forgetting things. You would probably want to let the conversion process do its tasks because part of those tasks is ensuring that the sheet structure will work correctly with the CC3+ drawing tools.

I don't see anything that would cause too much problem if applied to a CC3 drawing. It might scale some vector fill styles strangely if applied again. I do recommend always making a copy of the drawing before doing any conversion-type things.

I think that you can get the database version number of a file by using Notepad to open the FCW file (Make a copy of your drawing to be safe, then open the file in Notepad by right-clicking on it in Explorer and using Open With, read the text on the first line, and close Notepad without saving). The files should all start with "FCW (FastCAD for Windows) " and a number. CC3 is "6.20.0". I'm not sure what the number would be for CC2 because I haven't seen one of those files for a long time.

Calan

Thanks, jslayton.

I had thought checking the file in notepad might help and should've mentioned that I tried that, but was still left confused...

Most of the Hârn map files show as 6.12, but at least one shows as 6.037. (Confusing zero there; I'm assuming the latter is the 'oldest' and that they intended it to me something like 6.03.7).

But if I open one of these, just click 'save', and reopen in notepad, the version number is now 6.20. So it's showing it was saved using CC3+, but no 'conversion' has actually happened at this point.

So assuming 6.037 was the version of FastCAD used by CC2 Pro and 6.12 the version used by CC3, I can't actually tell by looking at this number whether the '6.12' files in the collection were actually generated in CC3 or whether they're CC2 Pro files that were just resaved in CC3, which I assume would also have update the numbers.

Gah.

Ah well. I'll have a look at the converter rules to see what's different and if they can give me a clue as to how to figure out with setting to use for which file.

Monsen

The Kanady maps are CC2 Pro maps.

The important differences here is that converting a CC2 Pro map tries to figure out which sheets the entities belong on by looking at their layer, then create the appropriate sheet and move the entities. This is a best-effort process, which may need some manual work before everything is ready.

The conversion of CC3 maps is mostly telling the maps that bitmap resources are now found in a separate data directory instead of the installation directory as was the case with CC3.

As Joe says, the CC is backwards compatible, and you don't need to convert your maps at all to use them, although if you want to take advantage of new CC3 features like sheet effects, you will need to convert them (manually or automatically) so you actually have entities on sheets to apply effects to, but there is no magic in the conversion routines that you cannot do manually, it's more making it a bit easier.

Calan

Thanks, Monsen! Good to know I don't need to worry about whether they might be CC3 and can just go with the CC2 Pro settings for conversions.

jslayton

The version number shown in the header block of the file is the version number of the software that wrote the file. The fine structure of the file (sheets, layers, fills, entities, and so on) can't be determined by looking at the file number, just the broad kinds of entities that might be present. Looking at the file version number is useful only if the file hasn't been saved with a newer version of CC.

I really do recommend using the automated process for conversion unless you have a very specific reason not to. If you try to do the conversion manually, things may not be working as expected later on when you try to work with the files, even though the files open and display correctly. The drawing tools in CC3+ expect certain configurations of sheets (and styles) and will fail mysteriously if those configurations aren't available.

JimP

I found on my CC2 maps, some of the symbols, paths, etc. gets placed on a Miscellanious sheet, which I have to move so it draws first, then symbols. Same for Floor. When the conversion is done, the Floor and Miscellanious sheets are placed after the Map Border sheet. That might be Floors, instead of Floor.

Other than that, I haven't had any problems converting them to CC3+.

Calan

@jslayton said:

>The conversion process applies the rules from a file in @system\converters to convert the CC2 drawing to a CC3 drawing. 

I've been having a look at the converters to see if I might make my own custom converters for these Hârn maps. I tried searching for documentation on the converter files, but didn't have any luck finding it.mThey seem pretty simple enough, but I have a couple of questions.

All the converters I checked seem to have the following:

1) path to a template relevant to the name of the converter (e.g., the 'overland CC2 Pro style' references '#Templates\Overland Maps\Wizard\CC2 Pro standard overland.fct' as the template)

2) name of a style relevant to the name of the converter (e.g., the 'overland CC2 Pro style' references 'Overland CC2 Pro' as the style)

3) layout to sheet mappings for placing entities on sheets based on their layer (and whether they're a symbol)

Section 3 looks straightforward. The syntax seems to be LAYER:SHEET, where:

• LAYER is the name of a layer in the file to be converted
• SHEET is the name of the sheet to create during conversion and to place entities of LAYER
• this section starts with a bunch of entries without a LAYER specified so you can clearly list all the sheets that should exist and set their order, even if no entities will be put on them during conversion
• $LAYER is a way to target symbols specifically
• * is a wildcard

But 1 and 2 don't seem to be doing anything as far as I can tell.

For 1 in particular, most of the converters start the path with a hash (#), which should mean the program installation folder; but there is no 'Templates' folder there. Even if the converter instead looks in program data, the template referenced in the overland cc2 pro style converter (CC2 Pro standard overland.fct) doesn't exist there, either.

And for 2, after converting a file and checking document properties, the style is always 'default' after converting. I would've thought it would be the style referenced in the converter.

So I'm not clear with 1 and 2 are doing. Am I missing something?

jslayton

The templates reference the hash (#) path rather than at (@) path due to the age of the converters (they probably haven't been touched since CC3 first came out). The # in the paths should be @. The age of the converters may mean that some templates no longer distributed with CC3+. If you want to make your own converter, I recommend picking a suitable template that you want to use as a destination. If the template is found (and only if the template file is successfully loaded), the conversion process will copy over fill styles, set up some suitable scaling factors, and set the default draw tools style specified by Style=. If the template isn't loaded (for example, if the path is wrong or the template doesn't exist), the style won't be set.

The $ and # on replacement names indicate a priority ordering: $ rules are applied to symbol references, # rules are applied to text, and rules without designators are applied to any entities where a rule hasn't taken effect yet (which may include symbols and text).

If you do make your own converter, make sure to keep a backup somewhere just in case you might want it again in the future.

Calan

Thanks again, @jslayton. Really helpful. I’m away from the computer and will need to give it another try at getting the style bit to pick up.

[Deleted User]

Annual 11, (2017) issues 121 is a good tutorial on converting CC2 to CC3+, with sheets and everything.

Calan

@jslayton said:

The templates reference the hash (#) path rather than at (@) path due to the age of the converters (they probably haven't been touched since CC3 first came out). The # in the paths should be @. The age of the converters may mean that some templates no longer distributed with CC3+. 

I've had another play and changing the # to @ at the start of the template for the 'overland cc3 style' converter allowed it to work properly.

So it looks like a lot of my confusion with the convertors has been because 1) they're broken (CC3+ doesn't even include the template referenced in the 'overland cc2 pro style' converter, and 'overland cc3 style' converter references the wrong location) and 2) the lack of documentation and feedback when using them (e.g., adding a simple warning that the template specified in the selected converter couldn't be found would've really helped--I don't think anyone should expect issues like these when using the converters provided.)

After fixing the 'overland cc3 style' converter and seeing it work, I was able to troubleshoot what was stopping my Hârnic converter - it seems the CC3+ conversion methods don't properly handle paths with accented letters like â, which was used in the Hârnic template filenames. Switching folders, filenames and the path to non-accented a's allowed my converter to pick up the template and properly set the drawing tool style.

@Quenten said:

Annual 11, (2017) issues 121 is a good tutorial on converting CC2 to CC3+, with sheets and everything.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll have a look. I don't mind paying for a good tutorial on creating converters, but I have to say I'm disappointed that broken converters are being distributed with CC3+ and the minimal documentation that's provided on actually using them.

I hope the devs put some love in fixing/updating/removing/replacing converters and updating the documentation on them.

jslayton

Cc3 is ASCII-only, unfortunately.