How to use fill style symbols?
Okay, Im following the CA14 annual pdf and I am currently doing the house section, and I have got the my first house done as far as the following to the outline, but before I go and make a my house a symbol. I wish to add shingles to my house but the annual pdf does not tell me how to do this. It just states that fill styles are not used often do overload visually, except small villiage maps. Okay, can understand that but I would like to learn how to do this using the fill styles, expecially SMC Fill Styles.FSC (Roof Slate fill, Roof tile fill) in the Symbols/Cities director if you have SMC. Now I want to be able to do this like the house in a CC2,3 map I found in the library called "Little Ursted.FCW. The person that made it did not make the houses into symbols unfortunately, however I really liked the shingled look he/she gave the few houses in the map. The shingles all are uniform and follow the correct way of the roofs and dormors, etc. Now, I am posting the map and my symbol catalog to show what Im talking about. Would appreciate any help on how to do this so I can finish my house symbol and go on to create more in this style. Thanks
Comments
In your drawing ("City Symbols.FCW"), click on the "All Drawing Tools" button, then on the Advanced button. You should have a drawing tool here called "House Symbol, Shading". Now select it, then click "New" (This will make a drawing tool based on this setting).
Give it a name, then hit the "Outline" button. Select "Extra Entity", then "Properties"
Uncheck the "Use current properties throughout", then place a check mark in "Use hatch style", and select the desired style". Make sure you set the Layer of the outline to "STRUCTURES (FILL STYLE)".
You now have a drawing tool that you can use that will draw both the shading and the hatch fill simultaneously when drawing, which automatically places them on the correct layers. Use this when drawing your house, then make a symbol as normal.
I followed your directions Monsen and have 4 tile roof tile fill tools now, but not the one I really want. Thanks alot for that information. It will come in handy
1. Open up the symbol catalog in the catalog window as usually.
2. Click once on the symbol you'd like to make a fill style from
3. Don't place it anywhere, just right click and "Finish"
4. Click on the Fill style indicator (upper right, "FS: something"
5. Symbol Fills Tab.
6. Hit new, give it a name
7. In the "Symbol Name", select the symbol you wish to use (You should find the one from step 2 in the list somewhere). Save (Don't bother if the preview looks strange. Due to scale settings, it often just shows a very small piece of the fill style
8. Make sure the "This is the currently selectd fill style" radio button is checked, then hit Ok. The Fill Style indicator should now show that your new fill style is active. Use the drawing tools in the rightmost toolbars to draw polygons filled with your brand new symbol fill. Or. you can use "Change Properties" on an existing polygon to change it's fill style to the new one. Remember that if you are creating houses, that you need to place this part on the "STRUCTURES (FILL STYLE)" layer.
Note that if the symbol fill doesn't turn up as expected, you may need to tweak the scale and spacing parameters in the fill dialog. For the slate fill, scale should be 1 on both X and Y, while spacing should be 20 (The width of the symbol). If spacing is to small, CC3 will use a lot of processing power, and generate what looks like a black box (Because lots of copies of the symbol gets stacked almost on top of each other)