Back to the NBOS Home Page
›

Converting lines to a polygon

DreadnoughtDDreadnought
in Fractal Mapper General

Hi all,

A friend of mine has used Fractal Mapper to draw quite a nice looking map. Unfortunately, he did it without reading much in the way of manuals or anything and now that he wants to edit it - it's a bit of a mess. He asked me to take a look at it as I'm more experienced with mapping but I am more of a CC3 user myself.

I've managed to transfer the entire map that was all on the general layer to separate layers, but now I am faced with a problem that I cannot really see how to solve. His coastlines for his main land mass and some smaller items were done as lines of some sort, and in many cases, the ends of the lines are not connected to their neighbouring lines. To the naked eye at map resolution it looks fine, but in terms of wanting to change the colour of the landmass with some sort of fill, the problem is pretty obvious. We don't have a polygon or anything like it.

I'm attaching the map (which should be open to the Coastline layer, I hope) and wondering if anybody can give me any advice on dealing with this. With CC3, what I would be looking at doing is zooming into every single line segment and removing any nodes that cause lines to overlap, then connecting the little gaps with lines that join and then once I've eliminated every leak creating a multipoly. Labour intensive but doable. Trouble is, I don't have the knowledge of Fractal Mapper to know how to do this, or even to be 100% it's possible.

What I would like to know is

(1) Can I delete single nodes from a fractal line so I can shorten it at the ends without losing the fractalisation? I appreciate there may be an interim step of somehow breaking up the line - if so, how do I do that, and then reconnect the broken bits of the line back together?

(2) Will adding little line segments to the ends of nearby line with Proximity Snap on create proper connections without leaks?

(3) If I do this with the entire coastline can I then convert things to a polygon that can be filled? If so, how?

I think those are my only questions right now - of course, if there is a miraculous feature that makes this all easier, I would not object to knowing about that either!

Thanks for your time - and any help appreciated.

Shaun

Comments

  • DreadnoughtDDreadnought

    Trying to attach the map - didn't seem to take last time.

  • Ed_NBOSEd_NBOS
    edited February 2017

    Yes, you can do that. But, my usual recommendation when trying to duplicate a coast line like this is instead to use the Fractal Polygon tool and trace along the existing continent in as much detail as you think you need. That will be a lot easier than trying to join all the lines. It will also result in a fractal polygon that fractalizes into far fewer nodes, speeding the map up a bit.

    Another alternative is to use the raster flood fill if you can get everything closed off enough. That will 'fit' a new polygon inside the closed off area.

    For your questions:
    1) You can delete nodes that the user chose when drawing, but not the individual fractalized nodes. But you can clone the line, which creates a non-fractal line out of all the fractalized nodes, and then delete individual nodes.

    2) So long as you have proximity snap enabled, you should be able to join the ends. It can't leak per se, because it will only join at the ends.

    3) Yes, once you have the whole thing closed, you can then clone the newly connected mega line into a closed polygon.

    But I really, really recommend using the fractal polygon tool and tracing the shape out. That's largely what its for. You can then tweak the fractal factor on it (usually lowering it a bit) for a nicely matching coast line, even if some of the bumps aren't pixel perfect to the original. Also, remember, once you've traced with the Fractal Polygon tool, you can add/remove/move nodes to further shape it.

  • DreadnoughtDDreadnought

    Thanks for getting back to me - very helpful.

Leave a Comment