cutting up a continent
moskthescribe
Newcomer
I'm cutting a continent up into several pieces (so I can later move those pieces around).
Any suggestions on best way to do this?
Right now I'm making duplicate copies, then tracing (via Trace function) along one exterior edge then drawing a new boundary inside the continent. Then I'm placing that smaller piece on a new layer, hiding it, and repeating the process to make another section. Get a little tedious and prone to errors, however, so just checking if there's a better method.
Comments
You could make things slightly easier on yourself by turning the original land shape purple (or any other random non-land colour) so that you can easily see the new bits and not have to move them to any other place at all. Just leave them where they are and delete the easily visible purple bit once you are done.
Hey Loopysue -
Just finished with the brute force method. Will test out your suggestions to see if that makes things more efficient for future efforts. Thanks.
Ok - just did a test on a regular 1000 x 800 mile sized map - and the whole thing was trivially easy to do - where I started with a landmass, no borders, and made it bright purple. Then created sheets Land A, B, and C each with varying transparency. Was then able to simple start new landmasses and use T to trace along the purple border (as well as new 'country' borders after first was drawn).
On my 8K x 10K map, things just weren't working that easy. I did eventually end up drawing/tracing new landmasses eventually. But when I was trying to use new landmass (no border) Edit and then click my current continent and trace in a similar manner, it seemed like the program was inconsistent about whether I was adding or subtracting from the original landmass - and I was very careful to always click on the portion of tracing that I wanted to keep - so I'm really not sure what problem I was running into.
Are you saying it was too slow on the larger map? That can make things seem uncertain. Other than that things should behave the same way if you do them the same way between maps.
If things are slow now before you ever add anything but the land, then it could be that you have too many nodes for comfort. The problem only multiplies as you add terrain and trace along the existing coastline for the edge. If this is ringing true to what you are seeing, I recommend using the SIMPLIFY keyboard command to reduce the total number of nodes. You would be surprised just how many of the nodes in a coastline don't actually do anything because they are too close together to be noticeable.
Hi Loopysue -
Yes, things were intermittently getting slow on that larger map (without any borders or symbols added), most pronounced lags when using the Trace feature.
I just made a copy of that map, and between the various landmasses, the node count is in the ballpark of 10,000 - and that's with just one copy of each item showing. There were times when I would have more than one copy showing with partial transparency so I could do tracings - and I did have Sheet Effects active - so between the node count and sheet effects I certainly may have been asking for trouble.
Doing some tests with the SIMPLIFY command, starting at setting of 1 mile and working up to 4 miles so far - and I've already seen a 90% reduction of node count on one of the main continents without any notable different.
Thanks, once again, for the guidance. A forum like this truly makes all the difference for someone trying to learn this program.
You're welcome :)
I learned everything I know on this forum, or from the many video tutorials and live mapping sessions, and from the Tome, but most of it was by asking questions right here - so I'm just passing things on in the traditional way ;)