The best way to depict cliffs?

jackypaper

If I have a shoreline and want to give the impression of sheer cliff faces, what is the best technique?

Thanks!

JimP

Well, some folks use small curved lines. It looks very tedious to me.

My eyesight isn't what it used to be, so I just do this:

---|---------|---

the dashes are the contour line.

I put larger straight black lines where I want the cliff and put the text 'cliff' nearby with a splinea for the arrow. Use the command astyle to adjust the size of the arrowhead.

Ralf

For a very large map, I'm currently creating I've used the this technique. A stone bitmap fill (rocks from Symbol Set 2), draw as a narrow polygon along the coast (using the trace option). It's not perfect at very close up, but looks good at a farther zoom.

Patrakis

I've never bothered to much about cliff lines on my maps other than using contour line very close together to show them on small scale maps. On larger maps, that kind of details is not relevant to me.

PAt

Georelrod

You can also draw the cliff graphics and scan them in and create fills/symbols out of them. It all would depend on your style you are trying to represent the cliffs as being in.

Simon Rogers

You can use Symbols Along on the Draw menu to add an Escarpment symbol to a curve, then delete the curve.

jackypaper

Ralf, I love your stone bitmap cliffs, above. I'm definitely going that route. Thanks!

magent

I've tried Ralf's method to do cliffs, but I can't get the Trace command to work. CC3 seems to ignore me pressing 'T' and just draws a polygon.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

edit: Oops, worked it out. Guess the T doesn't work for basic polygons - just the stuff like landmasses and contours