[Therion] Best approach for colouring elevations

[Bruce Mutton]

Hi Tarquin
There is no difference between colouring of plan or elevation projections.
If I am being pedantic, I make sure that scrap joins in plan and elevation are all made in the same passage location, and then colour both plan and elevation by altitude, unless I don't colour them at all.  If I am colouring for presentation I usually colour by altitude, but I also make use of all of the other automated colouring options, and white is a good choice too.
Automated colouring options are listed here, along with user definable overrides.
https://therion.speleo.sk/wiki/examples?s[]=lookup#colour_scales_-_lookups

Usually I am not so pedantic, and my scrap joins in elevation do not match those in the plan.  To compensate I just make sure scraps are short, and joins are placed near a change in gradient or altitude.

In the situation you describe I would probably define a new elevation map between each of your 'breaks'.
Then in your layout include...
colour map-fg map

Then if you also wish to manually specify the actual colours or labels, in your th-config include...

lookup map -title "Map colour legend"
  map1 at some_survey [colour] "passage in front"
  map2 [colour]                             "passage in between"
  map3 [colour]                             "passage behind"
endlookup

The colours are optional I think, you should be able to replace them with empty square brackets if you also want labels in the legend.  You can omit specifying the colours and the labels.  When this feature was first introduced I played with it quite a bit, but I may not have used the exact variant shown above.  I did have some trouble with colouring maps directly using select statements, as hinted at in the web page above, so it may not work perfectly.

Strategic use of transparency and opacity in your layout can also minimise the need to apply fancy colouring to your outputs, and in any case will enhance them.
Here are the statements and comments I put in my 'standard' layout to remind me of what might be good settings.  The opacity setting that works best for white passage fill is different to that which works best with colour fills.  It also differs for on-screen or printed output viewing.

  transparency on     # see thru passages
  opacity 50               # degree of transparency: transparent = 0 <= opacity <= 100 = opaque
                      #00 = transparent
                      #40 = subtle, 60 - 70 = apparent: overwritten text still visible
                      #80 = good passage definition but overwritten text barely visible  
                    #100 = block out passage underneath
Bruce


-----Original Message-----
From: Therion <therion-bounces at speleo.sk> On Behalf Of Tarquin Wilton-Jones via Therion
Sent: Tuesday, 30 April 2019 03:03
To: therion at speleo.sk
Cc: Tarquin Wilton-Jones <tarquin.wilton-jones at ntlworld.com>
Subject: [Therion] Best approach for colouring elevations

Hi folks,

With either extended or projected elevations, we end up with a few passages overlapping each other. This is intentional (so displacing some of them is not a desired solution). However, it would be nice to be able to colour them differently, to make it easier to see which parts belong to which passage. Colouring by altitude doesn't help in elevations, because they are all at the same altitude when they are overlapping.
"Colour by distance from the viewer" is better.

This could be coloured by colouring the individual scraps, but that is messy, and hard to maintain. The desired output would be "colour by break". Meaning; each time there is a "break" in the map, change the fg colour.

Does anyone have any tips on how best to colour extended/projected elevations? Is "colour by break" possible in some way? Or do you prefer a different approach?

Cheers,

Tarquin
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