Map Printing and Rivers

Phantom077

For some reason, when I try printing my map directly from within CC3+, none of the rivers show up on the printed copy. I have all Sheets set to visible, so none of them are hidden. When I preview what the print out should look like, it shows everything, including the rivers.

I will appreciate any help with this. Thank you.

Monsen

What is the line width of these rivers? Lines of width 0 are always displayed as narrow as possible, and since a printer has a much higher resolution than a screen, they appear extremely thin, almost invisible. If you are using width 0 lines, change the with to an appropriate number, setting any value other than 0 will ensure they have the same width at all times, no matter zoom level or device.

Other potential issues could be the settings in the print dialog (Must be set to print all sheets), but this is probably correct if only the rivers are missing.

I also assume that the rivers are visible after a redraw, which means it is not a sheet order issue.

Phantom077

Hi, Monsen. Thank you for your responding post.

Under Edit Properties, I selected all Rivers under the Layers window. Unfortunately, when I try changing the width of the rivers, it also affects lakes that are attached to the rivers. The lakes appear as outlined donuts upon Redraw/Refresh.

Is there a way to work around this, to avoid affecting the lakes?

Monsen

Fraction of map border is usually the best option to keep the drawing tools in, as this adjusts the width used depending on your map size, to prevent you from either ending up with extremely thin rivers on huge maps, or overly wide rivers on small scale maps. It is more difficult to relate to if you are trying to make a river of a very specific width though (Generally not recommended on overland maps, as the entities like roads, rivers and symbols represent the feature there, they're not an accurate representation), in which case it is easier to set it up with a fixed width.

Note that these settings helps CC3+ pick the desired width as you are drawing the river, once it is drawn, the line will always have a fixed width, which you can inspect using the List command.

Phantom077

Sorry, Mosen. I edited my previous post, above.

Now, my problem is that the change in River Width is affecting my attached lakes, making them appear as outlined donuts upon Redraw/Refresh.

Monsen

You need to make sure to only select the actual rivers. Lakes must have line width 0 (A polygon appeared as filled if the line width is 0, while if the value is above 0, it will appear hollow with an outline the size of the line width).

Unless you have a very large number of rivers/lakes, the easiest option is usually to just manually select the rivers and avoid the lake when changing them. Otherwise, you can use more advanced selection techniques, such as selecting by entity type (Rivers would be a 2D path or 2D spline, depending on if they are straight or smooth, while lakes would be a 2D Polygon or 2D Smooth Polygon). These selection methods are described in more detail int he editing chapter in the manual, or see this article.

Phantom077

Thank you, Monsen, for your suggestions.

Unfortunately, I feel like there are too many rivers for me to go through the tedious task of manually selecting each one, and each branching river, such as those found in deltas I created. I can try to level up my patience (hee, hee) if this is the best work around to resolve my problem.

But yeah, I was trying to quickly select all rivers, through the Layer window, which I guess also selects all the attached lakes. I'll check out the article you linked.

Monsen

If you have that many, before messing too much with your map, I do recommend you check out if that is actually the problem. You can easily check if a line has a 0-width by using list on it, and you can try changing just a few rivers and see if that helps with your printing.

Phantom077

Hi there, Monsen. It appears I found a solution to my problem. I simply manually selected all the lakes (since they are fewer in number compared to my rivers), and added them to a new, separate layer I made, just for lakes. So now, I can select all rivers by layer without selecting the lakes, and it allows me to change the width of only the rivers, without affecting the lakes.