Question about Layers with Sinister Sewers
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 250 images Mapmaker
I am designing a multilevel sewer system for a town. At the moment, I am considering keeping everything on a single FCW file, with duplicated sheets for the relevant sheets (for the drain lines and drain walls, water, etc.) for each level of the sewer system. If need be, I can create this map as separate hyperlinked files, but for the time being I would like to try to keep everything together because I might want to show how levels 2 and 3 interact, for example.
In order to simplify hiding/revealing levels of the sewer system, I was thinking about creating a Layer for each level of the sewer system, and then putting everything from a particular level on that Layer (including all of the symbols, water, walls, floors, etc.). That would mean that for Level 1 of the sewers, for example, there would be walls, floors, water, symbols, etc. all on the same Layer, which would allow me to show or hide the level with a single click.
However, I know some effects can be tied to things being on the correct layer. For example, I know that for doors and windows to properly break a wall, the wall has to be on the WALLS layer.
Sue has said in the past that she doesn't pay as much attention to the Layers. (Apologies if I'm getting that wrong.) My question is: with Sinister Sewers in particular (which doesn't use cutting symbols, as far as I can tell), are there special reasons why certain assets need to be on a particular Layer to work properly, or am I free to put everything tied to a particular level to its own layer?
Thank you!
Comments
Sinister Sewers doesn't use the usual wall cutting tools, so I think you would be all right doing that - as long as you realise it would become quite difficult to separate entities by layer. You would have to separate them by sheet instead.
However, to separate the levels you might wish to have separate sets of sheets instead of layers, so you can cast a shadow (for example) on the lower levels from the upper ones. Layers don't give you that power.
Thank you! Yes, I also have many separate sheets for each level, but for hiding/revealing a level, I thought putting the entire level on a single layer would be easier than hiding/unhiding a ton of sheets. I will make a copy of my FCW file and experiment to see if I break anything. Thank you!
A wise move - making separate copies to do anything experimental on.
A tip here:
If you want to cast shadows on the levels below use the FLOORS sheets.
Ohhhhh! I will try that.
It might not work perfectly, since the BACKGROUND TEXTURE is below the floors, but if you don't need that sheet, or only use it to outline the deepest level of drain, then you won't get too many problems.