Is there a watabou macro?

Fersus

Yesterday I finally had the time to import my first watabou map into cc3+ using the instructions from the annual. With the instructions next to me I was able to import it just fine, but I was wondering: As the steps one does are predefined and one will always do exactly the same steps (scale prior selecton, mark things by a specific color etc.) would it be possible to automate these steps with a macro?
I have never worked with macros in CC3+ before, so I've no idea where to start :(
Has anyone done some work in this regard?

Monsen

Some of the process could perhaps be automated, but the problem is that it relies a lot on the user identifying the correct entities, such as when selecting the grey outline around rivers, but without selecting the city walls.
Macros also don't have a way to handle the tricky selections, like the erase color 42 not fill style hollow step.

I guess some of the 'Change like draw tool' steps could be automated though, and the initial scaling of the import.

Fersus

Thanks for the info!

The river vs city wall argument is a good one, but I wouldn't mind if the macro would delete them. The towers should be redrawn manually anyways and the walls are easily placed again, as the city buildings painting a clear picture as to where the city wall used to be...

I really thought especially those commands that just select things based on fill stile and colour should be perfect for the macro, but as I said: I've no experience with macros what so ever, so I trust you on that one.
But this of course is bad news as that means even if I'm ok with the macro deleting the walls, the "select color 42 if hollow" step is still not doable. :/

DaltonSpence

Sure it is. The command is ERA;C;42;B;F;Hollow; (or at least I think so).

Monsen

Not quite so simple unfortunately.

Macros can't take modifier keys like that. For example, the 'C' here is a modifier key, not a prompt to be answered. Even if something can be fully typed on the command line doesn't mean it will work in a macro unfortunately.

For macros, you need to change the selection mode (SELBYC, SELBYL, SELBYP, SELBYA are all popular choices), but these only take a single argument, not a combination.


(I would love to be proven wrong on this, but so far, I can't find any way to make it work at least.)

DaltonSpence

The only way to combine SELBY* commands that I can think of would require you to

1. use the first SELBY to move entities to a new temporary layer,
2. make that layer current freezing all other layers and
3. use the second SELBY to work on some of those entities.

There would be some cleanup after this of course but that should be relatively simple. Steps 1 and 2 could be repeated multiple times to winnow down the selection.

Monsen

Not a bad approach in general, but unfortunately, there isn't a SELBYFS command available, so you still wouldn't be able to select by Hollow.
Further complications also lies in that there are no way to negate a selection, so you can't say something like anything but color 42. Not too much an issue here, since it is the fill style that is in question, and I believe all the entities that aren't hollow are probably solid. The lack of SELBYFS is the main issue here.

Fersus

Thanks for the analysis, Monsen. Let's hope that maybe a future version of CC3 will enable a full automatic import.