Good news, it's as easy as you think it should be!
Try this:
Manually set the sheet, layer, color, and line thickness you want the pentagon to have.
Right-click the Polygon button and select Regular Polygon from the pop-up menu. The Command line reads, Number of nodes [n]:, where n is the last number entered for the command (or the system default if never used).
Type 5, and then press Enter. The cursor changes to a giant "crosshair" and the Command Line changes to read, Center [X,Y]:, where X and Y are the current coordinates.
Click the map where you want the center of your pentagon to be and then move the cursor away to size it. Moving the cursor in a circle rotates the shape. Alternatively, you could type the coordinates if you know them.
When it's where you want it, left-click to set it.
I made a quick edit, so if you immediately went off to try it and something seemed off, you might want to double-check my new, corrected steps! Sorry about that.
Well it worked anyway - I'm not terribly good at following instructions, so I tend to fill in the missing bits (if there are any) with the next logical thing (depending a lot on what the command line says), and I seem to have a pretty good rate of accidentally getting it right
Still - its right there for anyone else who wants to know. Thanks again Dogtag
Tamed the garishly psychedelic grass, and now offer an alternative design for the buildings in the Sayer compound. This is just a sketch, so please excuse the fact that I haven't added in the rows and rows of tiny individual boxes that will house the junior and apprentice Sayers. These are represented by the white lines on the lower terraces to the south of the temple.
The pentagon may look really awkward and out of place, but its just a basic shape I whipped up in CorelDraw to mark the spot. There will be all kinds of additional details to go on it yet to make it look more like a building than a space ship!
Please let me know if you prefer this one, or the first layout earlier today. Thanks
I drew a perfect pentagon in CC3, just as you described it, and then I sat there looking at it, pleased as punch with myself... and I sat there... and then I realised I had no way of shading it the way I wanted to unless I did it in CorelDraw, where I drew two polygons, combined them into a single shape, filled the pentagonal 'ring' with copper roofing texture from CC3, added five sections of black and turned them variously transparent to imitate the shading on the roofs in the map, then converted it to a transparent bitmap and imported it as a symbol back into CC3+
Its not really the sort of thing I expect a mapping package to be able to do....
Except that you are probably now going to tell me that it can?
Thinking about it, you could do it in CC3 by drawing the polygon with an incredibly thick line (as thick as the building), then drawing the shadow shapes in various different shades of Solid 10 bitmap, Solid 20 bitmap, etc
Actually, CC3 does a fantastic job with shaded polygons, and with much less hassle, I think. In fact, it even rotates the bitmap fill as needed. And it's as close as your new friend, the right-click menu for the Polygon button.
Check out this post by Joachim de Ravenbel about roofs and his in-depth example of just how amazing this feature is.
That's just amazing, but with a pentagon I still think my way was better. I'd have been sat here all night, otherwise, trying to work out what angle each of the five sides was facing!!!! LOL
The reaction over on Cartographer's Guild to the new design was completely the opposite to the one here.
It was argued that military establishments are usually a hotch potch of things built in a hurry and wherever there's space... so I put my case for the second design by telling the history.
I think its only fair to share it here as well (but I do warn you, its rather long!!!)
...
I don't see that there's any great harm in sharing rather a lot more story than I was originally intending... it explains a couple of things
King Codari was the last of the Blucran kings. It was his crusade to find the Pool of Life that led to the Blucran invasion of the island 500 years ago. Previous to their arrival, the island was inhabited by the Merlish king - a man called Marin Blakevic, who ruled over a simple but enlightened race who were warriors of the sea and mind - fishermen, poets, farmers, philosophers, craftsmen and artists... but never the kind of warrior that would wield a sword or an axe!
Victory was achieved in a matter of hours. Codari enslaved the Merles, slighted Blakevic's existing palace, and when he discovered the most holy of holy's - the sacred Pool of Life at its core, was about to start building his own great palace right on top of the ruins... when the Blucran invaders started to fall to the Merlish plague.
Codari lost all 6 of his wives, and all his 32 children. Never was there a more sorry king!
Seeing his chance, Blakevic (who was being hidden and protected by his own people deep in the caverns of the island) offered himself up in exchange for the freedom of those who had been captured and enslaved, and was accepted on the grounds that the Blucrans now needed their help - Merlish medicine...
Blakevic suffered long and hard - many humiliations were inflicted on him by the wounded Blucran king, but Codari's grief made him weak and suggestible, so by continually forgiving him and lavishing compliments and praise on his more kindly works, Blakevic crept into the heart of his vain Blucran master, and managed to convince Codari that the way to ensure the arrival of his family in the Dream Place on Errispa (and indeed his own ascendance) was to build a temple over the pool, rather than a palace or a castle, and to immortalise his holy wish to join them in a splendid mosaic of the most perfect gems, embedded in the floor of the temple cupola, directly above the pool.
And so the temple was built, and the "Ascendance of Man" mosaic was created - Blakevic himself designing, cutting and laying many of the stones alongside his workmen. And so, also, were the riches of the mighty Blucran king entombed where they could never be used to raise another army, or enslave another people
Instead of the fortified palace that Codari had planned, we now have a temple, and when Codari died without issue his generals and priests formed an alliance of power that evolved to become the Sayer Council.
The later buildings around the temple were designed in no particular hurry, since most of the men were already billeted around the rest of the island. The pentagon shaped building (pentagonal because it fits the most in a very small space and allows the temple sufficient room to exist) is the command post. It houses all the senior Sayers, and all the core knowledge of the Blucran force - learning, history, a museum of artefacts... while the rows and rows of tiny boxes that will eventually be arrayed on the gentle slopes outside the pentagon will be the humble homes and shelters of all the lesser Sayers and apprentices.
Having been tutored in the use of aligned fills and shaded polygons (thanks Dogtag and jslayton), I have managed to draw the temple directly into the map in CC3+, rather than working with it in CorelDraw and importing it. I still have to work out the roof ridge tiles, however, which is why it looks slightly odd at the moment, and I think I may have gotten the scale of the texture a little on the small side.
The dome over the mosaic and the Pool of Life is temporarily a "cracked crystal ball" symbol, but will become a proper geodesic dome by the time I have finished the map.
The Garden of Reflection still needs a lot of work (and quite a few more trees), while the barracks that will be hidden behind the bulk of the temple from the main public entrance have yet to be started.
I wanted to try this shaded roof technique, and I felt that it was just like magic! In order to demonstrate that, I created a small video on how to draw a pentagonal roof in 3 minutes... It there:
Thanks Storm But I can't really take all the credit. Dogtag told me how to do it. Learning about shaded polygons has opened a whole new dimension to mapping with CC3+. The array function that jslayton refers to is just as impressive, though I haven't found a reason to put it to use just yet. In the last 24 hours I've learned about regular polygons, shaded polygons, and arrays. Whatever next?
Thanks for the link Gathar. I probably should have watched something like that before I embarked on the one in my map, which took me considerably longer than 3 minutes!!! LOL
I just couldn't work out what the "shaded polygon (angle by edge)" was supposed to do, and spent ages adjusting the angle by degrees entered on the command line.
umm.....yeah. that. was. just. confusing. I told you, techno idiot. I could NEVER figure out what on earth all that was about and how to accomplish it.
Did you mean the description or the video was confusing?
I'm all anxious to share the new information (new to me, that is) because it opens all kinds of possibilities - not just roofs, but aligned fills on walls, picture frames.... cliffs... rivers... anything that would look better if you could just turn the fill around a bit.
Yeah, I was originally going to mention it when you explained your map border but I figured you had the fills and it was already done, so there was no need to open a can of worms.
Heeeey Dogtag - why complicate a situation? I understand why you didn't tell me then.
I couldn't have done the pentagonal temple without it (unless I messed around with it for a couple of days in CorelDraw), so you told me when it mattered.
I, for one, am definitely learning on a very steep curve here, and I might have yet another problem to discuss when I upload again tonight.
(I can't seem to get the shaded polygon fills to match the ready made buildings that are supposedly made with the very same fills - not without adding HSL effects, and even then it doesn't look right, but I may have worked it out by then)
Comments
Try this:
- Manually set the sheet, layer, color, and line thickness you want the pentagon to have.
- Right-click the Polygon button
and select Regular Polygon from the pop-up menu.
- Type 5, and then press Enter.
- Click the map where you want the center of your pentagon to be and then move the cursor away to size it. Moving the cursor in a circle rotates the shape.
- When it's where you want it, left-click to set it.
Voilà!The Command line reads, Number of nodes [n]:, where n is the last number entered for the command (or the system default if never used).
The cursor changes to a giant "crosshair" and the Command Line changes to read, Center [X,Y]:, where X and Y are the current coordinates.
Alternatively, you could type the coordinates if you know them.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
Thanks Dogtag
Cheers,
~Dogtag
Still - its right there for anyone else who wants to know. Thanks again Dogtag
Tamed the garishly psychedelic grass, and now offer an alternative design for the buildings in the Sayer compound. This is just a sketch, so please excuse the fact that I haven't added in the rows and rows of tiny individual boxes that will house the junior and apprentice Sayers. These are represented by the white lines on the lower terraces to the south of the temple.
The pentagon may look really awkward and out of place, but its just a basic shape I whipped up in CorelDraw to mark the spot. There will be all kinds of additional details to go on it yet to make it look more like a building than a space ship!
Please let me know if you prefer this one, or the first layout earlier today. Thanks
Its not really the sort of thing I expect a mapping package to be able to do....
Except that you are probably now going to tell me that it can?
Check out this post by Joachim de Ravenbel about roofs and his in-depth example of just how amazing this feature is.
Cheers,
~Dogtag
You know... sometimes I get the feeling that I just don't know bo-diddly about this software!
Is that in the right click menu for drawing a circle?
Ah - found it. Its a command line thing
Thanks for that. I'll have a go with it a bit later this morning - see if I can't sort out this spiritualist-military compound all in a single day
The reaction over on Cartographer's Guild to the new design was completely the opposite to the one here.
It was argued that military establishments are usually a hotch potch of things built in a hurry and wherever there's space... so I put my case for the second design by telling the history.
I think its only fair to share it here as well
...
I don't see that there's any great harm in sharing rather a lot more story than I was originally intending... it explains a couple of things
King Codari was the last of the Blucran kings. It was his crusade to find the Pool of Life that led to the Blucran invasion of the island 500 years ago. Previous to their arrival, the island was inhabited by the Merlish king - a man called Marin Blakevic, who ruled over a simple but enlightened race who were warriors of the sea and mind - fishermen, poets, farmers, philosophers, craftsmen and artists... but never the kind of warrior that would wield a sword or an axe!
Victory was achieved in a matter of hours. Codari enslaved the Merles, slighted Blakevic's existing palace, and when he discovered the most holy of holy's - the sacred Pool of Life at its core, was about to start building his own great palace right on top of the ruins... when the Blucran invaders started to fall to the Merlish plague.
Codari lost all 6 of his wives, and all his 32 children. Never was there a more sorry king!
Seeing his chance, Blakevic (who was being hidden and protected by his own people deep in the caverns of the island) offered himself up in exchange for the freedom of those who had been captured and enslaved, and was accepted on the grounds that the Blucrans now needed their help - Merlish medicine...
Blakevic suffered long and hard - many humiliations were inflicted on him by the wounded Blucran king, but Codari's grief made him weak and suggestible, so by continually forgiving him and lavishing compliments and praise on his more kindly works, Blakevic crept into the heart of his vain Blucran master, and managed to convince Codari that the way to ensure the arrival of his family in the Dream Place on Errispa (and indeed his own ascendance) was to build a temple over the pool, rather than a palace or a castle, and to immortalise his holy wish to join them in a splendid mosaic of the most perfect gems, embedded in the floor of the temple cupola, directly above the pool.
And so the temple was built, and the "Ascendance of Man" mosaic was created - Blakevic himself designing, cutting and laying many of the stones alongside his workmen. And so, also, were the riches of the mighty Blucran king entombed where they could never be used to raise another army, or enslave another people
Instead of the fortified palace that Codari had planned, we now have a temple, and when Codari died without issue his generals and priests formed an alliance of power that evolved to become the Sayer Council.
The later buildings around the temple were designed in no particular hurry, since most of the men were already billeted around the rest of the island. The pentagon shaped building (pentagonal because it fits the most in a very small space and allows the temple sufficient room to exist) is the command post. It houses all the senior Sayers, and all the core knowledge of the Blucran force - learning, history, a museum of artefacts... while the rows and rows of tiny boxes that will eventually be arrayed on the gentle slopes outside the pentagon will be the humble homes and shelters of all the lesser Sayers and apprentices.
Having been tutored in the use of aligned fills and shaded polygons (thanks Dogtag and jslayton), I have managed to draw the temple directly into the map in CC3+, rather than working with it in CorelDraw and importing it. I still have to work out the roof ridge tiles, however, which is why it looks slightly odd at the moment, and I think I may have gotten the scale of the texture a little on the small side.
The dome over the mosaic and the Pool of Life is temporarily a "cracked crystal ball" symbol, but will become a proper geodesic dome by the time I have finished the map.
The Garden of Reflection still needs a lot of work (and quite a few more trees), while the barracks that will be hidden behind the bulk of the temple from the main public entrance have yet to be started.
Thanks for the link Gathar. I probably should have watched something like that before I embarked on the one in my map, which took me considerably longer than 3 minutes!!! LOL
I'm off to watch it now
I just couldn't work out what the "shaded polygon (angle by edge)" was supposed to do, and spent ages adjusting the angle by degrees entered on the command line.
At least I know now - ready for next time.
What kind of shape are you going to try, Storm?
In any case, i like the new building!
Did you mean the description or the video was confusing?
I'm all anxious to share the new information (new to me, that is) because it opens all kinds of possibilities - not just roofs, but aligned fills on walls, picture frames.... cliffs... rivers... anything that would look better if you could just turn the fill around a bit.
Oh well.
I couldn't have done the pentagonal temple without it (unless I messed around with it for a couple of days in CorelDraw), so you told me when it mattered.
THANK YOU!!!
I, for one, am definitely learning on a very steep curve here, and I might have yet another problem to discuss when I upload again tonight.
(I can't seem to get the shaded polygon fills to match the ready made buildings that are supposedly made with the very same fills - not without adding HSL effects, and even then it doesn't look right, but I may have worked it out by then)