I don't understand why I have never learned to use CC3+.
For background, I have 10 years of experience as a GIS technician. Started with ArcMAP, then pivoted to ArcGIS Pro, used both side by side for a while. I feel like CC3+ shouldn't be almost unapproachable for me, but yet, I'm just not understanding.
I know what I need. I need to create maps of landmasses and physical geography, then use those as templates for political maps. My Dungeons and Dragons setting jumps around in time, so I want to be able to take the initial maps and draw new political boundaries on them whenever there's a new world state.
Consistently, however, I find myself barely able to create the outline of a landmass, if I succeed at that at all.
Comments
You'll get there, Genghis! It's intimidating at first. I tried to dive in, figuring I could muddle through it, but that didn't work for me. My maps looked horrible (because it was before I learned to turn sheet effects on). What worked for me was the video tutorials. I recommend checking out some of the introductory ones and then some of the topic-specific ones before watching the Live videos (which are great but some are a bit more advanced if you're just getting started). But you're right: it's a great tool if you want to do variations on the same landmass, like shifting political borders, new towns and cities, etc.
Political boundaries are as simple as a multipoly. (Drawing a landmass) You can additionally add different types of fills to give them variety (alliances). If boundaries change, it easy to copy the whole sheet, hide the last one for reference. Then edit the boundaries, you can either transform, edit them or just redraw them.
This is a map I did for a friend with just basic borders and lots of unclaimed regions.
Oooops should have turned effects on.
If you want to get really nice borders learn the TRACE command. There is a good video for it as well as info in the Campaign Cartographer pdf and the Tome of Ultimate mapping PDF, It is absolutely not intuitive, but once you get it, it works well.
On my map I traced the coastline for the correct segment, then trace the adjoining poly along the shared border. Then just keep repeating until you can close it. After you do the first ten or so traces it gets a lot easier. If you have a really complex layout of borders, make a seperate sheet for each border. They will be a nightmare to select if all the borders are traced, they will overlap each other perfectly. Then you have to get into selection commands.
Here is the map with sheet effects turned on.
When I first started CC3, it was really difficult. It turns out that somehow the settings were not set to the default stuff. So, when I tried the tutorials and commands they never worked right. I was very frustrating. The other thing was layers and sheets not being like they are in Photoshop.
One thing I have found useful is the PDF instructions that come with the annuals, especially the earlier ones as they walked me through things.