Lots of Recent CC3 Software Crashes
choppinlt
Traveler
Over the last few days I have experienced an extreme amount of software crashes for CC3, and I'm not sure why. Has anyone else been having similar issues? Is this due to a recent Windows Update that is messing with CC3? Or am I just doing some very wrong? Specifically I am getting "fcw32.exe has stopped working" messages. I have done restarts, etc and I can make it better for awhile most times, but a few times today CC3 was virtually unusable for me. Anyone have any ideas as to the issue?
Answers
Some maps (especially complex maps generated by FT3) can cause problems with CC3+. Sometimes those problems won't happen until you try to edit some of the paths, sometimes they may happen immediately on loading the file (it will depend on a number of factors, including graphics drivers).
The main problem seems to be the massive number of nodes that FT generates on export to CC3+. The best way is to use SIMPLIFY to reduce the node number without affecting the coastal shape. Then split the really large areas of coastline into 2-3 smaller pieces.
"SIMPLIFY removes nodes that are too close to each other, as specified by the simplify distance. If you set this to high, the trace will be rather coarse when compared to the source, but you’ll want to have at least a small amount of simplification. On larger-scale maps, you may wish to increase this to at least 1, and perhaps even as large as 10. You may wish to experiment to fins the value that works best for you. Note that simplifying the edge obviously means you loose detail, but too much detail also bogs down CC3+, so the trick is to end up with the right amount of detail.: quote from Remy Monsen - https://rpgmaps.profantasy.com/leveraging-the-new-features-of-cc3-update-22/
Thanks for the replies, but I'm afraid at my current knowledge level my question remains as to how to remedy the situation. @Quenten I looked for a simplify command and found nothing. I read through the thread you provided and it appears the simplify command is in relation to Tracing. Is that correct? To clarify I am not tracing anything, simply exporting contour lines (and some coastline) from FT3 to CC3. Just this week I have been zooming in on the CC3 contour maps and the software crashes. In the previous few weeks I have not had a consistent issue with crashes in CC3with FT3 exported SRTM maps. I will add that there no other things associated with the map, only the FT3 exported contours. Sometimes its consistent, sometimes not.
My card is an nvidia RTX 2070 and I had not updated the drivers since January. I went ahead and updated to the latest driver from last week and the crashing issue remains.
I also must say that i don't consider the current maps I am doing nearly as complicated/demanding as maps I have been playing around with more recently. I fully realize that what I consider complicated and what the software considers complicated could be 2 different things. But in previous weeks I had been messing with maps with full 1' and 3' SRTM tile exports mixed with topo map bitmaps.
One thing I will add is that previous maps had the detail slider on the exports generally at a lower setting. But my current maps are zoomed in to avoid under sampling. Any more thoughts or guidance on what to do?
SIMPLIFY is accessed through the command line: just type SIMPLIFY and then press enter. It will ask you for the simplification distance, then you can select the entity to simplify just as you would with any other command.
A ha!!! Thank you!! I will give that a try.
After testing it out some I don't believe SIMPLIFY is going to help me. First off I have to select each and every contour path, and that is a no-go for the maps and contours that have over 1200 entities. Grouping them as 1 entity did not work for me, and it did not allow me to have a large selection window to select all at once.
My troubleshooting brain keeps going back to the fact that I was manipulating larger and seemingly more complicated maps last week with far less issues.
Thanks for the responses above! While I havn't found a particular reason/answer as to my crashing issues, the primary reason I posted was to see if others were having similar issues. Since this doesn't seem to be the case, I will assume that I'm just stressing the software beyond what it was meant for. So I will just dial things down and try some different approaches. Thanks again!
It is mostly Windows that doesn't like lots of fractal nodes.
I'm beginning to realize that! ? It freaks out when I get to a specific zoom level with FT3 exported SRTM contour lines. I have found if I zoom in without having the whole contour map in the window that I am generally OK. I believe I have found some work arounds for my primary issue.