City Designer 3 - Random Street Function
Hi All, I'm hoping someone will be able to help me before my brain explodes. I've read a lot and watched a lot but I can't seem to find anything that relates to what I'm trying to do, or when it does, I don't understand/can't follow along. Basically, I've designed my city at the street level (I've got my streets drawn and the border of the city drawn). It's a large city, so obviously I don't want to draw all the houses individually. I've tried using the Random Street function, but it won't follow my streets, it will only draw straight rows. From what I've read, there should be a way to have the function follow my already drawn streets, but I just can't seem to get it to work.
For the love of my sanity, could someone walk me through what I'm doing wrong? I've clicked the middle of the street, then right clicked a section of the street further down and then left clicked again, but nothing happens. I've left clicked and left clicked and right clicked in all combinations, but I just can't seem to get the row of houses to follow my streets.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help and please forgive me if there is a tutorial/video or PDF that covers this and I just haven't found yet, my brain hurts from all the reading I have done.
For the love of my sanity, could someone walk me through what I'm doing wrong? I've clicked the middle of the street, then right clicked a section of the street further down and then left clicked again, but nothing happens. I've left clicked and left clicked and right clicked in all combinations, but I just can't seem to get the row of houses to follow my streets.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help and please forgive me if there is a tutorial/video or PDF that covers this and I just haven't found yet, my brain hurts from all the reading I have done.
Comments
That straight line thing seems to happen if you don't click a line first. If you're having trouble clicking a line, that's why you get the straight line.
Try this and, unless otherwise indicated, "click" means left-click:
- Draw your road (which I believe you've already done).
- Click the Random Street button.
- Click the street near an end, where you want the houses to begin.
- Click near the end of the street where you want the houses to begin displaying. You don't have to click on the road itself. Also, you can click some way "down the street" and the houses will begin where you clicked, so you don't have to click at the end of a street if you don't want. The Command Prompt will change one more time to read, Second end of street.
- Move the mouse to the other end of the street and then click when you want to stop putting houses down along the street. Be sure you are not holding down the mouse button as you move the mouse. Everything so far should have been simple clicks, no clicking and dragging. Also, everything should have been left clicks.
- If you want to lay down more houses after you click to stop the first set of houses, simply repeat steps 3 to 5. That is, after you click to end laying down houses, click a road to begin laying down more.
I hope that helps,The Command Prompt (at the bottom left, by default) should now say First end of street.
I know you said this was the hard part. Remember that, regardless of how thick a street looks on your screen, it's really just a thin line with a "filled in" margin around it. So, the easiest way to select the street is to click in the center of the thickness. For example, if this was a line: ########## you would want to click in the "middle square" of the pound sign at one of the ends. You can zoom in to perform this action, if necessary.
Once you click the end of the street, the Command Prompt will change again, to read Pick start position [nearest endpoint].
Note: If the Command Prompt doesn't say this, then you didn't click the road and you'll get a straight line of houses. You can right-click to stop the command and then click the button to start again.
Now you've told CD3 which street to use as a guide and where to begin laying down the houses.
If the houses display on the wrong side of the street, don't panic. Simply click Undo and then repeat the above steps but, when asked for the starting point, click on the other end of the street. At least, that works for me. So, if I originally clicked a road to select it and then clicked on the left end and moved the mouse right, but the houses were on the wrong side of the street, I'd click Undo, click the road again, but now I'd click the right end and move the mouse left.
If you click an "empty" space, you'll get the straight line of houses thing. If that happens, simply right-click to stop the command.
~Dogtag
Perhaps I'm not making myself clear, perhaps there's something wrong with my program and I should be contacting tech support instead of posting here. Basically, when I click the "Random Street" button the little square icon doesn't follow my mouse cursor. I can't get it to go anywhere near the roads and if I click on a road the cross hairs go where ever the little square icon was and it immediately starts drawing houses even if I'm not dragging.
Is there a step I'm missing, do I need to be on a specific sheet for it to work? Or should I just contact tech support?
Thanks.
You don't have to be on a specific sheet or layer for the command to work. And, to be clear, you're not right-clicking anything, correct?
From your description, it sounds like you're saying that, after you click the Random Street button, your mouse pointer/cursor does not look like the image below? That sounds bizarre to me. I would have guessed the little square to be an actual part of the mouse pointer image itself. If your mouse pointer doesn't look like the image below after you click the button then, yes, I'd guess that could be a technical problem (or some other weirdness that someone way-more knowledgeable than I am might be able to help with).
~Dogtag
Thanks for all the help. I got frustrated this morning and deleted the old map and started again. Now it works, weird.
But now I have a new question. It's following my roads now and the cursor looks like the image above (yay and weird why it wasn't before), but it's spacing my houses randomly (which I guess is kind of the point of it being Random Street), but is there a setting in the advanced settings somewhere so I can turn off the spacing? I want my houses to be tightly packed along the streets.
Thanks.
I'm glad it was just some glitch!
To set street options:
- Right-click the Random Street button.
- Click the Street settings button, in the lower-left of the dialog box.
- Change the Distance between houses Min and Max values to suit your needs.
- Click OK to close the dialog box.
- Click OK to close the main Street options dialog box.
Cheers!CD3 will display the Street options dialog box.
CD3 will display another dialog with all kinds of settings that control how the houses display along the street.
Street settings are in map units. These are typically feet or meters for city maps.
CD3 will now use the updated settings when you lay down your next random street of houses!
~Dogtag
I set the min and max both to zero (as well as both to 0.00001 just in case it needed some number in there), but it is still setting the houses randomly spaced widely apart.
I hope the attachment works so you can see what I mean. The south side of the road I did manually. The north side I tried to use the Random Street function, but it only put 4 houses on the entire street.
Doing the whole map manually will be time consuming, but it might be less frustrating for myself and for you guys when I come back to bug you again and again.
Thanks for being patient with me.
What if you try a Min and Max value of 1? Below is a quick sample I made with a Min and Max value both set to 3 (feet). I added trees for color.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
IF that is the issue, one solution would be to use smooth lines for your roads before laying down the houses. Then, after you place the houses, fractalize the road.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
It shouldn't be fractalized. I used the CD3 Bitmap A Default Road (basically cobblestone). I just retried using settings of 3.00000 and 3.00000, not sure if those are feet or meters, how would I be able to check that?
Thanks.
I'm not entirely sure how to check which unit of measure the map uses. I always assume my city maps are in feet, unless I specifically choose a metric template. Someone else here might be able to give you a more substantial (i.e., "useful") answer, sorry. You say you tried the command using Min/Max of 3/3 — any improvement in the result?
As for the fractalized road, I'm referring to the fact that your road does not appear to be a smooth curve. Rather, it looks kind of "jagged," like a rocky coastline might. Compare the look (smoothness, not color or fill) of your road against the roads in my sample. My roads are smooth curves. I suppose your road could also be that way simply by using non-curved lines to make a road and by "jittering" the line as you draw it so that it isn't a perfectly straight line. Either way, a road with so many points that sharply and obviously change direction may somehow disrupt the Random Street function. That's nothing but a wild hypothesis, though.
~Dogtag
I did a quick check and it appears the Default Road tool for CD3 Bitmap A is a straight line and not a curve. I made a road with only a few bends in it and the result was widely spaced houses along one stretch of the road.
I then right-clicked the Default Road button and selected the Road, Paved 10' Smooth tool, drew a "parallel" road with it, and then used the Random Street function on the smooth road. The result was much more evenly-spaced houses. See the image below for the comparison. Note the houses on this map have Min/Max spacing values of 10/15. Also, the drawing tools were identified by widths in feet, so I presume the unit of measure for this map is feet.
I think the Random Street function has some issues with roads drawn with "straight" lines that include angles. If you need to use those kinds of roads, a possible remedy is to use the Random Street function multiple, separate, times — along the length of each "leg" of the angled road. Otherwise, I recommend either completely straight roads or curved roads (of course you can use a "curved" road tool to draw a straight road as well).
I hope that helps,
~Dogtag
Thanks for all your help.
A final thought? You may have already thought of this, but you could still use your sketched streets. Draw your streets, using the sketch technique you want, all on the same layer or layers. Then freeze the layer(s). Add another TEMP ROAD layer (or whatever) and then use the smooth road tool to draw smooth roads over the sketched ones. Then, use the random street tool on the smooth roads. After your buildings are laid down, delete all the smooth roads off the temp layer and then, finally, unfreeze the real road layer.
Alternatively, you could use sheets but, instead of freezing, hide the real road sheet once you draw the temp roads.
In any event, I'm glad it worked out!
Cheers,
~Dogtag