I experimented. I think black contour outlines may be acceptable. Everything else was not much better than no outline, and too subtle for me.
I printed the above out and it is just as hard to discern and differentiate contours from forest as it is on the screen. Admittedly, the professional printers versions are not the same as mine, but there you go.
Fortunately, I don't need to decide today or even soon. Just before I start sending stuff to the printer.
You could go a bit lighter with that background brown. Remember that the top of your range should be nearly white, and its nowhere near white, so everything is rather a lot darker than it needs to be. Perhaps hide everything except the background sheet and the contours and see how light you can get that background?
in the 1st picture, I set the background to shade 47, the lightest brown in the standard pallet. It looks like a white sheet of paper. All the other contour sheets are set to white 10%
In the next picture, the <200m contour (the bottom) is set to 47 and the other ones (200-900) are set to white 10%. It looks pretty much the same.
In the third picture, I set the <200m contour to shade 40, the middle brown. contours are still not very apparent to me.
Here I set it to shade 38. This makes a big difference to me, but the higher level contours are still difficult to discern. These are all different than they would be if they were printed. I went through every shade of background from 47 to 37. 38 is the one that is easiest for me, but people standing over printed maps from 2 or 3 feet away have to see the contours to properly appreciate the map. Sigh. I get where you want to go, but it just doesn't work for me. I think I need the contours surrounded by black lines. Anything else is too subtle for me. Remember, I'm partially color blind and when I had my cataracts out, my vision was not quite the same. I need rather bold colors, subtlety is somewhat beyond me, especially in color. I like the look of the map with white. I think using shade 47 @ 10% for each sheet would end up being too dark and spoil the effect.
I have enclosed the FCW again for you to experiment with if you like. Please don't feel obligated to do so. I really appreciate all the time, effort, and advice you have provided for this project. Perhaps I need to take a rest from it and concentrate on the other aspects of the game design. You are more than generous with your time.
How about if you set the opacity of all the contours to 15 instead of 10? That will give you a bigger difference between the individual contours - a greater contrast. You might then be able to lighten the brown a little more.
Thanks for the file, but I can only adjust things to suit my own eyesight. It really needs to be done by you, so that you can be sure everything is clear.
I've done a bunch of experimentation. However, it dawned on me that you used your custom "Fred" palette and I am using the standard palette. That could account for part of the difference.
I fear trying to bring you pallete in would change other things as well.
I did change them all to 15%. It pretty much looked the same to me. Maybe I will try 20%. On the other hand, I have tried 10% fill on all the contours using the lightest brown fill either.
By the way, the highest contours (900m) are comparatively tiny when compared to the rest of the map. There are only 4 peaks with that height. The one that really matters is the Wasserkupe, which is 'famous' for being near the source of the Fulda River and the home of the glider school where the Luftwaffe trained before they were the Luftwaffe. There is also a picturesque castle ruin that we loved to go visit near there. I would mark locations of ruins on my maps as we maneuvered around teh country side and then my wife and I would go back and visit them and eat at little restaurants near them or do a picnic.
I think black lines around them will the solution. They are gray when set to transparency, easy to see, and do not seem to overpower the map. Brown was not readily distinguishable to me. I didn't like using green as the background fill, so brown it is.
I'm going to take a short break from the map and concentrate on calculating combat power for the units and finalizing the counters. There is still a lot of other stuff to do. SIGH.
Our stay at home ends on Monday, but they want us to wear masks outside. Restaurants are limited to 25% capability. It doesn't bother me much one way or the other. The only stores I like to go to are book stores, hobby shops, office supply store, and the grocery store. Occasionally a hardware store. We go to one restaurant a month whether we need to or not. We love the waitress there.
We mappers have the advantage, in that most of us secretly crave the excuse to sit at the desk and map.
Take your time with the contours. Maybe do a few thumbnail exports of a tiny part of the map and print them to see if certain settings are ok or not. Don't waste ink and money by printing the whole map each time.
I've made some test prints of the area my unit operated at "game size" (11x17 inches with 6cm hexes) no need to print the 15 sheets till I'm ready to start play testing again.
The main things to now with the map is proof the roads then put them on one sheet to see how your glow suggestion works, check the rivers again, name things, and make the terrain key which is a separate sheet.
It would be interesting to see a couple of photos of those prints, but only out of curiosity. I managed to mend my printer, but only well enough to print out shopping lists for my mum's groceries. It wouldn't do justice to a map, so I'm curious about how well CC3 maps convert to the printed product.
My HP 7610 and Epson 75F10 series do a reasonable job for prototyping and the Epson lets me print edge to edge, which I like. They are a little "light" in appearance.
When I send them to a professional printer they look quite good.
I'll take some photos, but because of the size limitations of the sight, I think they won't look much different than what I post on line normally.
I bought two last month. And 7 books on the Little Bighorn (postponed till 2020 - wah), two on strategy, one of the 11th Cavalry Regiment in Vietnam, one by one my favorite futures authors, a sci fi book completing a trilogy, a book on quantum physics (for the layman), and maybe two more.
I helped out the author of the first one here, and ordered two more games of his last month too. Not sure when they will get here.
My game is for the 11th ACR and V Corps, OBJ Nuremberg is for VII Corps.
Its hard to study history, design games, play games, and build models. Even when quarantined.
Sue, as requested, here are some photos of my maps as printed. In some cases, they include a map from my printer and a map from the printing service I use.
First below is Rannagun Germany. The top map is the printer's map and the bottom one is my map.
The second is near the Inner German Border, Top is printer's, bottom is mine.
Third are two of maps I printed. The one in the background is the 1:100000 scale version I had done previously with no counters. This smaller one used your white contours, darker on the bottom.
Fourth compares my earlier test map with darker brown contours on the bottom, lighter on top, with your method of darker on bottom, lighter on top.
The fifth map shows the typical size of my larger game maps. The table is 5 feet on a side.
As can be seen, the appearance from a "professional" printer is much different than mine.
I forget to take a picture of how FRED comes out. Here you go.
As you can see, the effect is not quite as pronounced as it is on the monitor. Edit: Far too subtle for me. I don't know if I will send my map out to a printer for a test
I'm going to have to experiment a little.
1. Print sample with white transparent 15% 2. Print sample with some Brown transparent 15% 3. Print sample with dark on bottom, light on top 4. Print sample with light on bottom, dark on top.
Turkey Trots to Watter GG Where Is RPT Where is Task Force Thirty Four ? RR The World Wonders
Well, Sue, looking at the Sagon map thread, I think I need lines around my contours to better distinguish them, I like his forest fill effect, and I think I need to move the base color to the left on the brown row so the upper contours are not so glaringly white OR shade each one like I normally do. Sigh.
Thanks Sue. That was very helpful. CA85 does not suit my needs because it is in meters and the example maps fit inside a 1km grid square at 1:50000 scale. It also only had 6 contours and a terrible (from my point of view) symbol set.
I looked at Military Operations and it too cartoonish for my taste, although it has 9 land contours, they are hideous and the symbol set is very limited. I looked at Shaded Relief. More contours, no symbols.
I looked at Overland Standard, but it embeds the map key in the map Overland Standard, at it floats my boat because that is where the cool symbols are like a modern tactical map uses.
But alas, it has Fractal Contours. This is good because that has the delete key to remove bad points, so I modified it per your instructions (they made sense, where nothing else I did was clear enough for me, but that might have just been stupidity on my part) and changed fractalize to smooth polygon, but then I lose the ability to delete points. Rat.
For various other reason, I have typically used Overland Political, but I didn't like the contours, but I was able to modify it so it draws on a desired sheet and color, so I could make 16 contour sheets and tools and then when I have to switch, it just automatically selects the right one. That's cool. I just drew the contours using the smooth or straight poly tool before, so this will be a great added feature for me.
Now, if I could just move all the symbols I like into Overland Political, that would be really cool. As it is, I have to find them, open them, and I can use them, but when I save and close the map, only the ones I used stay there. Then I have to go hunt them all down again. (This is important, because for some maps (those where I am modeling a 2 x 2 or 3 x 5 km area,) I like to use trees and sometimes building instead of green fill for forests and pink/gray for built up areas. I also like the forest polys in 85 (wwII) and they area editable, but again when I modify them to a polygon, I lose the delte capability. Less of an issue for trees then it is for polygons though.
In other news, I think I am going to outline the contours in brown, regardless of whether or not I use the white polygon or different colors of brown methods in the map as it clearly delineates contours from trees.
If I implement all the stuff in a way that it always comes back, it will save me a lot of time and frustration in the future.
That's a lot of very disparate information, so I will answer it with brief headings so you know which bit I'm responding to.
Overland Standard - I'm sure you could remove the embedded key if it's there on the template when you make a new map. Everything in a map is only ever lines and polygons if you think about it. You would just need to do a bit of disassembly work. All drawing tools can be edited. The important thing is that you don't go and edit the tools that are standard for the style. You get around that by clicking the New button each time you want to change something about a standard tool, and make your own version with a similar name but some identifying tag to remind you that this one is your version.
You can delete nodes drawn with any drawing tool by hitting the DEL key. They all work the same basic way, even though they draw different kinds of lines or polygons.
Moving symbols - as I said before you don't have to move anything, and shouldn't (or you will thoroughly mess up the entire symbol referencing system). All you need to do is open the correct symbol catalogue - the .FSC file. That is done by clicking the right hand button immediately above the catalogue pane and browsing to the right place to find it. Don't open the folder! You might see the folder, but when you see the folder you need to also look for a file with a similar name with an FSC extension. That is what you need to open. Doing this will open the catalogue within your map, no matter that the map is one style and the catalogue is from another style.
If you outline the contours might I suggest using as thin a line as possible? Zero line width. There is already a slight colour difference. The line is only to accentuate the separation. The two things work together. Neither needs to be particularly strong when both are used.
Actually it is SS3 Overland Pro metric/standard. The legend is on the mapboarder and does not appear to be clickable.
Delete nodes. You can delete the nodes selected with the drawing tools (on the left side of the screen), but those on the right are immune to the technique. Bothersome.
Moving Symbols. Yeah, I got that. I would never try to move them. By "move" I really mean "make easily available to me in my map". So, I can find them and load them and use them after I get them there, but I would like the to "stay" there after I move them. Unless I use a particular symbol, I have to go through the whole process again the next time I open the map.
Outline. I can barely see the contour when it is 0 width while I am drawing it. It frequently gets lost in the background of the real map I am using. So I usually make it 0.1 or 0.05 or so, which I can see. I can't see the contours outer edge at all on the CF map, especially through the trees and on the whiter parts of the drawing.
New Stuff:
Today I tried the black glow effect on my Heavy Duty roads. The first three times, the black didn't look like they did on Fred and they were huge. The fourth try (I was flipping back and forth between the Fred map and my map) and I finally got it to work by making the blur size and range each 0.01 units. Nifty. My plan, such as plans are (they never survive first contact with the enemy) is to apply the effect to each road sheet in order to make sure things are lining up. If I put them all on the same layer, they will all look like they aren't any overpasses or underpasses. If keep them in layers, one that are on top will look like they have a bridge over the ones on the bottom.
It occurs to me I should do the same thing to the rivers/streams, only with blue of some sort.
Delete nodes doesn't work in certain places? I'm sure that's not right. It could be some kind of a Technical Support issue there.
Moving symbols - LOL! You have no idea what you trigger in the very slightly OCD part of me that neatly ties certain terminology to the phrase "bad thing to do" in my head! LOL! If you open a catalogue from one style in a map of a different style and its like that when you save and close down for the day it should stay put. Even if it doesn't, providing you have already clicked each of the symbols in the visiting catalogue file they should appear in your used symbols tray. Not immediately easy to find, but it's the toggle switch with the green icon on the top left of the catalogue panel. Click to see what symbols you've already collected there, and then click to go back to the normal catalogue panel. You might be surprised just how many symbols you have collected along the way. I always am.
The underpass/overpass situation is a tricky one. I'm not sure the glow effect will really work for you, but you can try it and see if there's a way around it.
Oh, I understand about "moving". It causes me problems sometimes. I this game we play, there are troops, police, and guerillas (or insurgents). In my way of thinking, they are all "troops" but because the rules distinguish between what they can do. So my opponent has to constantly correct me when I do something wrong. To me, when I say I want to "move" the symbols to another location, I don't mean drag the files over or copy and paste them to move them, I mean "somehow place them in a position where they are easily findable for me."
And my wife and I do not have the same vocabulary, even after 43 years of marriage. In fact, I think it is getting worse. But she is Norwegian. Her name is Torill. Feminine diminutive of Tor. Thunder. LIghting. Big Hammer when she gets mad at me.
The upper left green icon indeed does what you said. Dang. But I still have to add them when I make a map from scratch. Same with my "contour" drawing tools, right?
I experimented a little with moving things to the same layer. I don't like the effect when all the roads open up a different class road, so I am leaving them on different sheets (notice that?). That way the Autobahn is always passing over the lesser roads. Now, of course, that is not how they all are in real life. Sometimes the lesser road builds an overpass over the Autobahn, but its more frequently an underpass. (I made a specialty as a platoon leader and company commander of seizing places like that in exercises. Sometimes we could have just crossed the Autobahn in our tanks, bus the Polezi and my commander would probably become a bit perturbed with me. Thus being able to seize those places made for other successes.) I don't really want to add all the bridge symbols on that map. I admire the dedication and precision of those map makers.
I am making forward progress on finishing the map. Other things are languishing. Like the rest of the game. But the map is about 1/4 of the battle.
I'm not sure if the drawing tools that are added to symbol catalogues work the same way with the green button. I've never thought to look because it really isn't that hard to make a new one for yourself. I hope that those instructions have opened up that avenue for you now.
LOL! sheets not layers!
It's good to know that you are moving forward.
Take care of yourself and your wife - all your family
A lot of work completed proofing the map for Covering Force. The view is shown without the Forest Cover. I have simplified the road and stream networks, added 0 width lines along the contour boundaries, added a few details such as the Location of OP Alpha, the nearest East German Border Tower to the OP, the small monument to the family that was killed trying to escape East Germany, and the small castle we loved to visit. Fulda and our barracks and the town we lived in are off the map to the left, so are not shown.
Next step is to add names for the rivers, roads, and towns and probably to simplify the road network some more. I am contemplating turning the gray roads white. I had used the Glow method on the roads, but the black lines aren't visible on the map when printed, so I took that effect out. Getting there.
Just 2 things - I think the grey roads would look too important if they were glaringly white, and the glow can be adjusted in width if it isn't visible on the printout. That just means its too small to be seen.
Comments
I printed the above out and it is just as hard to discern and differentiate contours from forest as it is on the screen. Admittedly, the professional printers versions are not the same as mine, but there you go.
Fortunately, I don't need to decide today or even soon. Just before I start sending stuff to the printer.
in the 1st picture, I set the background to shade 47, the lightest brown in the standard pallet. It looks like a white sheet of paper. All the other contour sheets are set to white 10%
In the next picture, the <200m contour (the bottom) is set to 47 and the other ones (200-900) are set to white 10%. It looks pretty much the same.
In the third picture, I set the <200m contour to shade 40, the middle brown. contours are still not very apparent to me.
I have enclosed the FCW again for you to experiment with if you like. Please don't feel obligated to do so. I really appreciate all the time, effort, and advice you have provided for this project. Perhaps I need to take a rest from it and concentrate on the other aspects of the game design. You are more than generous with your time.
Thanks for the file, but I can only adjust things to suit my own eyesight. It really needs to be done by you, so that you can be sure everything is clear.
I fear trying to bring you pallete in would change other things as well.
Don't worry about what palette for now. I don't think that's the issue.
By the way, the highest contours (900m) are comparatively tiny when compared to the rest of the map. There are only 4 peaks with that height. The one that really matters is the Wasserkupe, which is 'famous' for being near the source of the Fulda River and the home of the glider school where the Luftwaffe trained before they were the Luftwaffe. There is also a picturesque castle ruin that we loved to go visit near there. I would mark locations of ruins on my maps as we maneuvered around teh country side and then my wife and I would go back and visit them and eat at little restaurants near them or do a picnic.
I think black lines around them will the solution. They are gray when set to transparency, easy to see, and do not seem to overpower the map. Brown was not readily distinguishable to me. I didn't like using green as the background fill, so brown it is.
I'm going to take a short break from the map and concentrate on calculating combat power for the units and finalizing the counters. There is still a lot of other stuff to do. SIGH.
Our stay at home ends on Monday, but they want us to wear masks outside. Restaurants are limited to 25% capability. It doesn't bother me much one way or the other. The only stores I like to go to are book stores, hobby shops, office supply store, and the grocery store. Occasionally a hardware store. We go to one restaurant a month whether we need to or not. We love the waitress there.
Hope you are doing well.
We mappers have the advantage, in that most of us secretly crave the excuse to sit at the desk and map.
Take your time with the contours. Maybe do a few thumbnail exports of a tiny part of the map and print them to see if certain settings are ok or not. Don't waste ink and money by printing the whole map each time.
The main things to now with the map is proof the roads then put them on one sheet to see how your glow suggestion works, check the rivers again, name things, and make the terrain key which is a separate sheet.
When I send them to a professional printer they look quite good.
I'll take some photos, but because of the size limitations of the sight, I think they won't look much different than what I post on line normally.
Have to think about the best way to do it.
Please don't waste good time trying to sort out a few photos if it's awkward like that!
I didn't mean to divert you from your main task
I've bought about 10 films since lockdown began.
I helped out the author of the first one here, and ordered two more games of his last month too. Not sure when they will get here.
My game is for the 11th ACR and V Corps, OBJ Nuremberg is for VII Corps.
Its hard to study history, design games, play games, and build models. Even when quarantined.
First below is Rannagun Germany. The top map is the printer's map and the bottom one is my map.
The second is near the Inner German Border, Top is printer's, bottom is mine.
Third are two of maps I printed. The one in the background is the 1:100000 scale version I had done previously with no counters. This smaller one used your white contours, darker on the bottom.
Fourth compares my earlier test map with darker brown contours on the bottom, lighter on top, with your method of darker on bottom, lighter on top.
The fifth map shows the typical size of my larger game maps. The table is 5 feet on a side.
As can be seen, the appearance from a "professional" printer is much different than mine.
It is going to be very difficult judging just which shade of brown is the right one.
Thank you very much indeed for taking the time and trouble to illustrate just what you are facing.
As you can see, the effect is not quite as pronounced as it is on the monitor. Edit: Far too subtle for me. I don't know if I will send my map out to a printer for a test
I'm going to have to experiment a little.
1. Print sample with white transparent 15%
2. Print sample with some Brown transparent 15%
3. Print sample with dark on bottom, light on top
4. Print sample with light on bottom, dark on top.
Turkey Trots to Watter GG Where Is RPT Where is Task Force Thirty Four ? RR The World Wonders
(Not that I recommend starting again!)
I'm just saying that if you have the annual you can examine how it is all set up so you don't have to do too much extra work yourself
I looked at Military Operations and it too cartoonish for my taste, although it has 9 land contours, they are hideous and the symbol set is very limited. I looked at Shaded Relief. More contours, no symbols.
I looked at Overland Standard, but it embeds the map key in the map Overland Standard, at it floats my boat because that is where the cool symbols are like a modern tactical map uses.
But alas, it has Fractal Contours. This is good because that has the delete key to remove bad points, so I modified it per your instructions (they made sense, where nothing else I did was clear enough for me, but that might have just been stupidity on my part) and changed fractalize to smooth polygon, but then I lose the ability to delete points. Rat.
For various other reason, I have typically used Overland Political, but I didn't like the contours, but I was able to modify it so it draws on a desired sheet and color, so I could make 16 contour sheets and tools and then when I have to switch, it just automatically selects the right one. That's cool. I just drew the contours using the smooth or straight poly tool before, so this will be a great added feature for me.
Now, if I could just move all the symbols I like into Overland Political, that would be really cool. As it is, I have to find them, open them, and I can use them, but when I save and close the map, only the ones I used stay there. Then I have to go hunt them all down again. (This is important, because for some maps (those where I am modeling a 2 x 2 or 3 x 5 km area,) I like to use trees and sometimes building instead of green fill for forests and pink/gray for built up areas. I also like the forest polys in 85 (wwII) and they area editable, but again when I modify them to a polygon, I lose the delte capability. Less of an issue for trees then it is for polygons though.
In other news, I think I am going to outline the contours in brown, regardless of whether or not I use the white polygon or different colors of brown methods in the map as it clearly delineates contours from trees.
If I implement all the stuff in a way that it always comes back, it will save me a lot of time and frustration in the future.
Once again, thanks for your help.
Overland Standard - I'm sure you could remove the embedded key if it's there on the template when you make a new map. Everything in a map is only ever lines and polygons if you think about it. You would just need to do a bit of disassembly work. All drawing tools can be edited. The important thing is that you don't go and edit the tools that are standard for the style. You get around that by clicking the New button each time you want to change something about a standard tool, and make your own version with a similar name but some identifying tag to remind you that this one is your version.
You can delete nodes drawn with any drawing tool by hitting the DEL key. They all work the same basic way, even though they draw different kinds of lines or polygons.
Moving symbols - as I said before you don't have to move anything, and shouldn't (or you will thoroughly mess up the entire symbol referencing system). All you need to do is open the correct symbol catalogue - the .FSC file. That is done by clicking the right hand button immediately above the catalogue pane and browsing to the right place to find it. Don't open the folder! You might see the folder, but when you see the folder you need to also look for a file with a similar name with an FSC extension. That is what you need to open. Doing this will open the catalogue within your map, no matter that the map is one style and the catalogue is from another style.
If you outline the contours might I suggest using as thin a line as possible? Zero line width. There is already a slight colour difference. The line is only to accentuate the separation. The two things work together. Neither needs to be particularly strong when both are used.
I think I covered everything?
Actually it is SS3 Overland Pro metric/standard. The legend is on the mapboarder and does not appear to be clickable.
Delete nodes. You can delete the nodes selected with the drawing tools (on the left side of the screen), but those on the right are immune to the technique. Bothersome.
Moving Symbols. Yeah, I got that. I would never try to move them. By "move" I really mean "make easily available to me in my map". So, I can find them and load them and use them after I get them there, but I would like the to "stay" there after I move them. Unless I use a particular symbol, I have to go through the whole process again the next time I open the map.
Outline. I can barely see the contour when it is 0 width while I am drawing it. It frequently gets lost in the background of the real map I am using. So I usually make it 0.1 or 0.05 or so, which I can see. I can't see the contours outer edge at all on the CF map, especially through the trees and on the whiter parts of the drawing.
New Stuff:
Today I tried the black glow effect on my Heavy Duty roads. The first three times, the black didn't look like they did on Fred and they were huge. The fourth try (I was flipping back and forth between the Fred map and my map) and I finally got it to work by making the blur size and range each 0.01 units. Nifty. My plan, such as plans are (they never survive first contact with the enemy) is to apply the effect to each road sheet in order to make sure things are lining up. If I put them all on the same layer, they will all look like they aren't any overpasses or underpasses. If keep them in layers, one that are on top will look like they have a bridge over the ones on the bottom.
It occurs to me I should do the same thing to the rivers/streams, only with blue of some sort.
Moving symbols - LOL! You have no idea what you trigger in the very slightly OCD part of me that neatly ties certain terminology to the phrase "bad thing to do" in my head! LOL! If you open a catalogue from one style in a map of a different style and its like that when you save and close down for the day it should stay put. Even if it doesn't, providing you have already clicked each of the symbols in the visiting catalogue file they should appear in your used symbols tray. Not immediately easy to find, but it's the toggle switch with the green icon on the top left of the catalogue panel. Click to see what symbols you've already collected there, and then click to go back to the normal catalogue panel. You might be surprised just how many symbols you have collected along the way. I always am.
The underpass/overpass situation is a tricky one. I'm not sure the glow effect will really work for you, but you can try it and see if there's a way around it.
And my wife and I do not have the same vocabulary, even after 43 years of marriage. In fact, I think it is getting worse. But she is Norwegian. Her name is Torill. Feminine diminutive of Tor. Thunder. LIghting. Big Hammer when she gets mad at me.
The upper left green icon indeed does what you said. Dang. But I still have to add them when I make a map from scratch. Same with my "contour" drawing tools, right?
I experimented a little with moving things to the same layer. I don't like the effect when all the roads open up a different class road, so I am leaving them on different sheets (notice that?). That way the Autobahn is always passing over the lesser roads. Now, of course, that is not how they all are in real life. Sometimes the lesser road builds an overpass over the Autobahn, but its more frequently an underpass. (I made a specialty as a platoon leader and company commander of seizing places like that in exercises. Sometimes we could have just crossed the Autobahn in our tanks, bus the Polezi and my commander would probably become a bit perturbed with me. Thus being able to seize those places made for other successes.) I don't really want to add all the bridge symbols on that map. I admire the dedication and precision of those map makers.
I am making forward progress on finishing the map. Other things are languishing. Like the rest of the game. But the map is about 1/4 of the battle.
LOL! sheets not layers!
It's good to know that you are moving forward.
Take care of yourself and your wife - all your family
Next step is to add names for the rivers, roads, and towns and probably to simplify the road network some more. I am contemplating turning the gray roads white. I had used the Glow method on the roads, but the black lines aren't visible on the map when printed, so I took that effect out. Getting there.
Just 2 things - I think the grey roads would look too important if they were glaringly white, and the glow can be adjusted in width if it isn't visible on the printout. That just means its too small to be seen.