An interesting work around...
LadieStorm
🖼️ 50 images Surveyor
I found an interesting snag while working on my last map. I don't know if it's a bug, or not, but I was trying to use a DD3 bitmap fill in a CC3+ overland map. Vintyri and Dogtag gave me two separate ways to bring in bitmap fills...but when I tried to use the way Vintyri showed me, my cc3+ crashed. Every time.
I couldn't get Dogtag's way to work, either, but in the process I found an easy way that did work. I wanted to share it.
I found that if I start a DD3 map, add something to it(anything really) then MINIMIZE the DD3 map, and open the cc3+ map I'm currently working on, I got the bitmap fills from BOTH templates.
I don't know if it's a fluke, or not, some I'm hoping someone else will try this little technique, and tell me if it works for them. I'm curious to see if it's a viable shortcut.
I couldn't get Dogtag's way to work, either, but in the process I found an easy way that did work. I wanted to share it.
I found that if I start a DD3 map, add something to it(anything really) then MINIMIZE the DD3 map, and open the cc3+ map I'm currently working on, I got the bitmap fills from BOTH templates.
I don't know if it's a fluke, or not, some I'm hoping someone else will try this little technique, and tell me if it works for them. I'm curious to see if it's a viable shortcut.
Comments
For inserting additional fill styles from another template into your map, I find it easiest to simply use Draw -> Insert file to insert a map containing those fill styles into your current map, place it, then immediately do Edit -> Undo (Ctrl+z), which will remove the inserted map, but will leave the fill styles behind.
I thought at the time the crashing might be down to some having very similar if not identical filenames. I couldn't get the Desert texture from HW to load without crashing until I'd deleted both the default desert textures.
Could it be down to the way the default land tools are set up in different templates - crossing wires with the available bitmap textures if they aren't the expected files?
I don't know enough to know what I'm really talking about, which is why I'm only discussing it, not reporting it at the moment
Maybe its just something we are ALL doing wrong, but for so many people to make the same mistake...? Unlikely.
I think someone who knows the software a lot better than I do might be better placed to report it properly.
Generally, if you want a map to be in another style (such as making an FT export into the HW style), that is generally the better way to go, rather than to import all the HW fill styles into the exported map.
I was woken at 5.30 by my neighbour's motorbike (as per usual) and couldn't stomach even looking at the tracing work to be done, so I tried doing just that, but now I have a different question:
How can you tell what size to make the new HW CC3 file to take the copied bits and pieces without having to fiddle around with scaling (and not quite getting it right)?
I tried taking the dimensions from the exported file (exported at '768' from FT3) by opening it and placing my cursor at the top right hand corner, then reading of the coordinates (16791x8948 in this case), but when I created the CC3 file with those exact same coordinates and started copying and pasting all the various layers I had exported with exactly the same FT settings as different files to make separating the contours a bit easier, they still don't quite match up. (Please see screen shot). All three contours were copied with the pasteboard origin set by keyboard to 0,0, and pasted the same way, by using the keyboard to dictate that they were pasted at 0,0.
There is also the very strange effect of horizontal ghost streaking that plays "now you see me, now you don't" with you as you zoom in and out to try and see what's going wrong to cause it (if you change the fill of these copied and pasted objects to anything other than plain old solid). This means you still have to trace them anyway.
I'm not complaining. Nothing is ever completely perfect, and the software is pretty brilliant in the first place, but there are times when it takes just as long to sort out the copying and pasting as it does to trace by hand from a bitmap.
I don't like snap facilities, so I never have mine turned on, and there's no grid in existence in this file to cause such a problem.
(Don't you just love life's little ironies sometimes)
1) make a hollow square of the area I want to png export. Measure it with the distance tool.
2) mark it with the distance.
3) export as a rectangular sectio png, by using the same hollow square you marked in step 1.
4) import into the new map. I typically import it into a template f the same size; however, if you want to use it as part of a larger map this is what I would do. a) mark an area in the new map with a hollow square, same size. Or mark the map with temporary construction lines of the same distances you found in the above map. b) Import the exported png into the new map.
I would also suggest the imports be put on a bmp or screen layer and sheet so you can easily delete them when you are done tracing them.
I will try again when I can manage to stop crashing this map (and all its start again versions)
All I can say is that this one must at last be the right map base for Errispa, because I just can't seem to give up on it
If that doesn't work, you may have to send it to tech support.
Thanks Jim. That did the trick. Now on with the work!