Colour coding buildings

gak

I was reading about the possibility of colour coding buildings using the symbol's underlying shape (which is normally hidden) this evening but I can't find any further references to it or how to use it. I'm assuming that you could set all your merchant buildings to grey, for example, and then have them show up more clearly in the map. Is that correct? If so, how to do this? If not, what is "colour coding"?

Thanks!

JimP

vari-color buildings would work for that.

if you see a small square in the upper right of a symbol display in your 'symbol pick' area just to the left of the map area, that shows you a vari-color, variable color, symbol.

gak

There seems to be more to it than that. Here's the quote from CA14:

"On STRUCTURES (COLOR) always draw a plain one- color polygon outlining the shape of the house (you can use the drawing tool House Symbol, Background for this). This polygon usually sits unseen in the background behind the house shading, but is used with the Color Buildings and Layers commands (all on the City menu) to color and display buildings according to their functions. If you don’t want to use these functions (see the City Designer help files), you can leave this layer out."

I found a bit more detail in the Help file (as it says!): you assign a colour to everything on a given layer and then use a command to show/hide the symbols on the layer. I assume that if you show/hide two layers, you'll get a combined effect. I'm going to have to play with this a little and see what happens. So it's not the same as varicolor, the way I understand it.

Ralf: when the Help is updated, could you include a "results example" for this, please? It would clarify what the feature is used for and help users decide if they want to plan for it. Ta!

(I didn't look in the help originally because I was expecting something in the menu bar - the rest of the menu bar changes, and I made an invalid assumption. Now I know better.)

gak

When I try to follow the help's instructions, no matter what city template I select, I don't get the Color Buildings dialogue box shown in the help, I get a box called "CC2 layers". And it's empty. I've tried both vanilla templates and SMC templates. Now I'm confused...

Ralf

That's strange. What happens if you type CCL at the command line and hit enter?

gak

I get the same result: CC2 layers dialogue box.

JimP

Interesting. I typically change the selected color, and use vari-color building symbols. Place them.

Change the color in the color selector, place other vari-color building symbols.

Ralf

Please send over a tech support request from your registration page. This is something I can't really handle via the forum.