How do you keep your $#!^ organized?

Don Anderson Jr.

So I am doing a bunch of maps. Overland, City and Floorplan.

I keep losing fills. I search through all the different products and I just can't find ones I used recently. Not going to lie it REALLY tries my patience. I go to use fills and the list has virtually nothing. Then I switch and get some more. Then sometimes I even get some red x fills.

How do you keep your stuff organized? I just can't remember which style I hit, let alone the 50 fills I just tried , then switching to a different style and a new selection of fills.

Loopysue

It sounds like you are having an unusual number of problems - especially if you are getting red Xs where you presumably had the fill before.

I add fills from other styles by using Insert file in the Draw menu, picking a map with the fill I want in it, and then pressing ESC just before pasting it. That way I get the fills in that file but not the file itself.

How are you adding them?

Don Anderson Jr.

I try find the poly in the top bar sometimes.

I also try the edit function and choose the fill drop down

Loopysue

If you are looking for a bitmap fill that you've used before in another map, but which isn't in this current map, use the Insert file option in the Draw menu and pick the older map.

When you get to the point where a paste operation is expected, press ESC instead. Even though the Insert file operation is terminated before the paste CC will already have imported all the bitmap fills from that older file and they will appear in the selection dropdown.

But it sounds like you are talking about fills other than bitmaps. What kind of fills are they?

Don Anderson Jr.

I've been using a huge assortment to get the effects for my roofs.

I found the red x's are from something a long long time ago.

I'll have to really dig into this try and make my time more efficient.

Loopysue

Maybe if you share a map that has red Xs in it (upload the FCW file here) we might find out what the problem is?

Monsen

Some general organizational rules to avoid red X'es in the future.

• Make sure to never edit, move or rename any art file (fill or symbol) in the CC3+ data directory, never attempt to reorganize them.
• If you want to bring your own art files, either brand new ones edited copies of official resources, make sure to have a custom directory structures for them INSIDE the CC3+ data directory (Remember, you can make your own subdirectories inside the existing Symbols and Bitmaps directories), and once the art files are in there, remember to treat them according to the rule above.
• When importing fills into a map, always make sure they are imported using correct relative paths, so that the path starts with @Bitmaps for fills and @Symbols for symbols and not something like c:\programdata or similar. But as long as you followed the rule above, both the import symbols and import bitmap dialogs's "realative to CC3 path" will work and do this automatically, and as long as you follow this for every map, then fills imported using the insert file option Sue mentions will also be correct.
• Never try to import a fill or symbol not in the CC3+ data directory. Stick with the above rules, starts by putting it in the data directory, THEN add it to your map from there.
• And as long as you followed the above, getting it up and running on a new computer is also dead simple, just install all the same add-ons, and then copy over your custom artwork directories to the same relative location as it came from, and you are set.