CC3 Political Borders Disappearing(Solved)

BlackXKatt

I'm extremely new to CC3(as in, I just got it and started using it yesterday). I watched tutorials and got a pretty good grasp of the program(well enough to do what I aimed to do). Just as I was putting finishing touches on my map last night, I zoomed out to look at see if I forgot anything. To my surprise(and extreme agitation) my political borders were dotted in odd places or just completely gone. Yet, when I zoomed in, some of them would reappear. Also, as I move the sliders to get different views of my map, different lines dot, disappear, and reappear. It seemed to happen after I added text labels to the map(mountain ranges, states, etc.). I tried changing the width(though I doubted that was the problem, considering they were perfectly fine earlier). I tried creating a glow effect to make the lines more pronounced, but no help. When I couldn't find anything online, I gave up because it was 11pm and I was fed up. Today I've tried retracing them, which I have to do multiple times while zoomed in, which appears to do nothing until I zoom back out, and the borders are there from the re-tracing. However, if I move the screen, they disappear again. I haven't been able to find anything on the forum, so I'm making my own thread.

Help please?

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj152/15Cat_Girl15/Bordersglitch.jpg

Ralf

Hi there, please post your FCW file here on the forum (or send it to me at ralf@profantasy.com), it's difficult to say what's happening from your screenshot.

BlackXKatt

Oh, okay. Thank so much for taking a look.

Ralf

There's two things happening here:

1. Your line width was still rather low, making it hard to see the lines at higher zoom levels. I've set it to 1.0 on all borders in the attached map.
2. Your borders were on the sheet POLITICAL BORDERS, which is behind the RIVERS sheet. That made the rivers and the lake (left side of the map) partially obscure the borders, further reducing their visibility. I've moved them all to the sheet POLITICAL BORDERS FRONT sheet, which makes them more visible.

BlackXKatt

Oh, thank you. I was just confused because they all appeared from a zoomed out view earlier. But as long as it works now, I'm fine. XD Thanks again.

Ralf

I suspect that's because they were original line width 0 (zero).

You'll actually see the lines on screen better if they have width zero, as then CC3 will always display them at 1 pixel width on screen. If the width is something else but zero, CC3 tries to display it matching that, which makes them disappear at higher zooms.

The drawback of using width zero is that the line can become VERY thin on printouts, as the printer has a much higher resolution than your screen and a 1 pixel print is tiny. The same goes for high-resolution pixel exports, as the 1 pixel border will get very thin indeed in a 4000 px wide bitmap.