A map in itself conveys a lot of useful information. It shows you the lay of the land, the location of terrain features, the names of various locations, and so on. But you often have lots of additional information that doesn’t fit on the map itself, such as GM-only information about the traps in the dungeon, lore information about the different places, statistics, and so on. All of this is things you may wish to have at your fingertips when using the map. So, let us explore various ways you can easily provide extra information with a map.

Map Notes

CC3+ has a built-in system for storing notes along with your map. These are not visible in the map itself, but embedded in the map file, and can be brought up when needed.

To access the list of map notes, either click the Map Notes button on the toolbar, or select Drawing Properties from the File menu and then hit the Map Notes button in the dialog. This will bring up a dialog showing the list of all map notes for this map. From here, you can select any map note and click OK to show that map note, or you can hit edit to change it. You can also create new map notes from here. Continue reading »

Update 16 to CC3+ just released (get it from your registration page), and with it comes a long list of added commands and fixes. Let us have a look at those new commands, and discuss how to use them in your mapping efforts.

I’ve divided this post into two different sections. The first part describes the new features that are useful in your mapping, while the second describe the more technical commands. I recommend you give both sections a view, but many users will probably want to just glance over the technical section and see what is relevant for them.

Do note that all the new commands in this update is presently only available as command line commands, which you must type manually on the CC3+ command line, they are not available in the menus or toolbars yet. Don’t let this discourage you however, as using a command from the command line is just a case of typing in the command on your keyboard and hitting enter (as long as you are not currently in the middle of another command). The rest is just doing as the command line tells you, which you should be familiar with from many other commands already.

The Fun Stuff

Contours from raster images

So, let us start with one of the more exiting additions to CC3+. Previously, if you wanted to import a map you had drawn in another program into CC3+, you would have to import it as a background image, and then manually trace over it with the drawing tools to recreate the map in CC3+, as there was no way for CC3+ to generate proper drawing entities from your image, such as landmasses.

However, with the new CONTOURSM command, this has changed. To start out with expectations for this command, what this command does is to find edges in your image, where edges are defined as transparent vs non-transparent pixels. This makes it a nice command to automatically convert an image of a landmass into a CC3+ polygon, but it is not a general solution for converting any kind of image and get all the details converted to CC3+. So, what this command mainly does is that it saves you from manually tracing the outline of your landmass. For anyone who have done this with a complicated landmass, they should quickly realize how big of a time saver this is.

So, to explain the use of this command, here is a brief mini-tutorial on its use. I will take an image of an island and turn that into a proper CC3+ editable drawing entity.

Note that even if this tutorial uses a landmass as an example, the use of this command is not limited to landmasses.

1. 1. Before we begin in CC3+, we need an image of our landmass. I’ve used the below image for this. However, as I mentioned above, CC3+ detects the edges based on transparent vs non-transparent pixels, so I can’t just insert this image. I need to edit it in an image editor first, and make the seas transparent and the landmass a solid color. Since this is a CC3+ tutorial and not a tutorial on image editing, I won’t go into the details here, but generally you should be able to just load the image into your favorite image editor, and then use the magic wand or similar selection tools with a reasonable tolerance to select sea areas and make them transparent. The second image below shows my landmass after this process.
      

Continue reading »

Campaign Cartographer 3+ is a product in constant evolution, with new features, both small and large, typically gets added for every update. For this article, I want to have a look at some of these features and give a short introduction on how you can start experimenting with them.

Some of the new features have already been covered in other places. For example the new improvements to the Symbols Along command where documented in the February 2018 Annual – Dungeon Walls and I wrote a Command of the Week article on the new Symbols in Area command. For those into macro writing, I have also covered the new Get Extents commands.

Perspective Scaling

Probably the largest addition in the latest update is the new PSCALE commands. These haven’t been added to the menu yet, so you need to type them in on the command line, but they are a series of commands that are intended to help you make pseudo-perspective maps by automatically changing the scale of a symbol depending where it is on the screen. This command was developed in response to several such maps appearing in the forums. Let us start with an example image to show what the command can do.

So, looking at this image, you can see that the symbols closer to the bottom of the image is larger than the ones near the top, which provides a pseudo-perspective look on things. While it is certainly possible to do this manually, this example was made by using the PSCALE commands.

Continue reading »

Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus gets a new free update and you a new drawing style with it! Originally published in the Cartographer’s Annual, we’ve decided to share Herwin Wielink’s overland style with a wider audience. It’s a style of lovingly crafted, playful bitmap symbols and high-detail textures. With more than 250 symbols, 30 textures and and more than 60 drawing tools, it is one of the largest drawing styles we’ve ever published in the Annual. Click the image on the right to see a high-detail version of an example map in Herwin Wielink’s style.

To get the new update download it from your registered user’s page. Some of you may have recently downloaded Update 4; it’s 4a you need to get the new style.

Apart from the new style and some bug fixes (see the Readme file for details) Update 4 prepares CC3+ for the release of Perspectives 3. We needed to update specialised components needed to handling up to 8 different isometric views for one symbol, add light and shade and support angled fill styles.

Here is another big example map in the Herwin Wielink style:

The Perspectives 3 pre-release offer is coming soon – look at for an email from us!

The next compatibility update is here: Symbol Set 3 – Modern is now available for CC3+. Symbol Set 3 provides a variety of styles modern maps: 3 different floorplan styles (two bitmap-based, 1 vector) and two overland styles, one for Ordnance Survey-style topographic maps, the other for modern political maps.

Click the example on the right to see a large-scale version of the bitmap-based floorplan style created by Jonathan Roberts for Symbol Set 3, and click the left image below for an example of the modern political style, based on the work of Brian Stoll. The right image shows an example of the Vector Ordnance Survey style.

If you already own Symbol Set 3, you can simply download the setup for CC3+ from your registration page. If you do not own SS3 yet, you can get a copy here.

The installation of Symbol Set 3 for CC3+ requires the latest update (CC3+ Update 3). Make sure to download and install it from your registration page before SS3.

We are happy to announce the next compatibility update: Symbol Set 1 – Fantasy Overland is now available for CC3+. SS1 provides four new drawing styles for overland map, made up from over 2,500 new symbols, bitmap fills and drawing tools.

Click on the example map on the right created by Stephen Manuele. It shows off one of the new overland styles included in SS1 . The style, created by fantasy cartographer Sean Mcdonald, it is a wonderful handdrawn-like option for your fantasy maps. Download a large-scale pdf version here.

Check out the two more examples of maps drawn with the included styles as pdf versions:

Kingsport and Surroundings (the second bitmap style included in SS1, created by Peter Gifford)
Range of the Gods (a hand-drawn vector style, created by Sarah Wroot)

If you already own SS1, you can simply download the setup for CC3+ from your registration page. If you do not own SS1 yet, you can get a copy here.

by Steve Townshend

I began using Profantasy software around 1999 when Campaign Mapper, a basic version of Campaign Cartographer, came bundled with TSR’s AD&D Core Rules 2.0 CD. That program sparked my passion for the software and I purchased virtually every release over the next decade. In 2009, changing technology and changing lifestyle changed my hardware needs, and when my last (very big) desktop PC broke down I replaced it with a (very small) Macbook Pro. While that machine was the right choice for me, I could at first only run Campaign Cartographer via a slow, quirky virtual machine, and with sadness I gave up CC3 almost entirely. Until now.

If you’re a Mac user interested in running the best fantasy mapping software in the industry, you’re in luck. The newer, faster CC3+ can now be installed and run without Windows, and aside from a few minor quirks its performance on the Mac is better than ever.

This tutorial focuses on how to install CC3+ on a Mac using the Crossover application created by Codeweavers. We’ll begin by examining a few of the other common options in brief. This installation was done on a late 2013 Macbook Pro running OS X Yosemite.

Boot Camp and Virtual Machines

In the past, a few options have existed for running CC3 on a Mac. Some users preferred to use Apple’s Boot Camp to set up their Macs with a Windows partition so that they could choose whether to load Windows or Mac OS.

Others used virtualization software like Parallels or Fusion, programs that allowed the user to load Windows on a virtual machine without the necessity of logging out of Mac OS and into Windows.

Those options may remain good choices for users that regularly work with multiple Windows applications. However, if you’re not using many Windows-specific programs on your Mac this may not be your ideal solution, as you’ll devote a large chunk of disk space for a Windows installation that you’ll rarely use. On the occasions you do use it, you’ll need to wait through the installation of multiple updates that you missed since the last time you loaded Windows. These Windows updates can take a long time to download and install. In addition, you’d have to purchase a Windows license as well as the Parallels or Fusion product.

An application called Wine circumvents Boot Camp and virtual machines altogether, placing Campaign Cartographer front and center on your machine so that it works similar to any other Mac application.

Wine

Wine is a “compatibility layer” that allows Windows applications to run in other operating systems like Mac OS without installing Windows.

Wine is open source software and free to use, and it can capably run Campaign Cartographer. Various individuals and companies have adapted their own versions of Wine, including supported, purchasable products like Crossover, which we will use to install CC3+.

If you own Campaign Cartographer and haven’t upgraded to CC3+, or you don’t wish to purchase Crossover, then the free Wineskin Winery is another option. On the Profantasy Forums my friend Ryan Sturt provides a solid walkthrough on how to install CC3 using Wine.

*Drawbacks and Limitations: Installing Campaign Cartographer through Wineskin Winery can be tricky and may necessitate a little trial and error. As usual, it’s a good idea to back up your computer using Time Machine before installing new software. In addition, running CC3 in a maximized window sometimes yields sluggish performance.

Crossover

For a smoother installation and simple interface there’s Crossover, a supported version of Wine, by Codeweavers. Use Crossover if you want the easiest and fastest Mac interface for CC3+ and you don’t mind purchasing some software in order to run it.

Crossover uses separate “bottles” to store programs. Each bottle is its own virtual Windows environment with c drive, folders, and registry, but without the Windows files that typically fill those folders.

Crossover offers a 2-week free trial with which you can install and run CC3+ on your Mac and decide whether this option will work for you. If you decide to eventually purchase the software, be sure to click the More Options button on the product page in order to see the least expensive ($40) purchasing option that includes 1 month of software support. Since Crossover doesn’t officially support Profantasy Software, paying for additional months of Crossover is not likely to be worthwhile. At your option, you can sign up for the Codeweavers mailing list; they occasionally offer promotional codes for Crossover discounts.

*Drawbacks and Limitations: While Crossover will easily install CC3+ (as well as CC2 and Fractal Terrains), it does not appear to be able to install the old CC3.

Installing CC3+ on a Mac Using Crossover

Follow these steps to install Crossover and CC3+ onto your Mac running OS X.

1. Download CC3+ onto your Mac. You can access your registered software on Profantasy’s site after you log in and click Your Registered Products. Select the Downloads & Updates tab and then download your software. You won’t install it yet, however.
2. Now download and install the free trial of Crossover.
3. Launch Crossover from the Launchpad or from your Applications folder.
4. After you open Crossover, select the Install a Windows Application button.

Alternatively you can select the Bottle menu item at the top of the screen and select New Bottle (I usually select a Windows XP bottle) or click the + sign at the bottom left side of your Crossover window and select the same option. You can name your bottle CC3+, or Campaign Cartographer, or whatever you choose. That process is a little more straightforward, but the Install a Windows Application button is more evident onscreen.

5. If you used the Install a Windows Application button Crossover will prompt you to install the application. Campaign Cartographer isn’t listed on the menu of supported applications so scroll to the bottom of the menu to Unsupported Applications > Community Supported Applications > Other Application. Then click Proceed.

6. On the next screen select Choose Installer File and navigate to the place where your Campaign Cartographer download “CC3PlusSetup.exe” is stored on your machine (by default it will be in your Downloads folder) and select the setup file.

7. Before you go farther, select the Edit button beside the next menu, “Will install into a new Windows XP bottle Campaign Cartographer 3.” This will allow you to name the program. I call it “Campaign Cartographer 3.” If you don’t name it prior to the installation, your CC3+ program will appear as its file name instead (i.e. “CC3PlusSetup”). You can select any Windows bottle you like, not just Windows XP.
If you do forget to name your program, you can rename it later.

8. If you’ve ever installed a Profantasy product, the screens that follow will look familiar. Simply follow the prompts, enter your serial number (found on Profantasy’s Registered Products page), and unless you have good reason to do so, use the default directories that the installer chooses for you.

9. Once you’ve finished the installation, the Profantasy installer will typically ask if you want to launch the program. It’s usually best to UNCHECK that box. This will let Crossover finish its work (you’ll see Crossover’s progress bars reach the end).

10. Click the CC3+ icon in your Crossover menu. Time to start making maps!

* Known Issues: Right now, text doesn’t always work quite right on any version of Wine. It’s likely that you’ll need to fix text on your old maps and experiment with text spacing when making new maps.
CC3+ usually works better in a window rather than as its own desktop. For instance, if you click the green maximize circle and allow CC3+ to be its own separate desktop window, you may experience slower performance. If you instead drag the corners of the CC3+ window so that it occupies the majority of the screen, you’ll have approximately the same workspace but without the performance issues.

Installing Add-ons

Installing add-ons like Dungeon Designer and City Designer into your CC3+ program is simple once you know where to start.

– As usual, begin by downloading your software from the Profantasy site.
– Open Crossover and select the bottle where you have Campaign Cartographer Plus installed. Select the Run Command icon (or select it from the menu under Bottle > Run Command). Then, Browse for the file you’ve downloaded and open it.
– The Profantasy installer will begin. Follow the prompts to enter your serial numbers and complete the installation.

Not all of Campaign Cartographer’s add-ons are currently available for CC3+ but as the Annuals and other add-ons are updated you can continue to follow this process to add them via Run Command in your Campaign Cartographer Plus bottle.

Tips and Tricks

Locating CC3+ Files in Crossover

Finding the CC3+ files in your Finder can be tricky, and at first finding your designs can be frustrating if you don’t know where to look.

To find your files in Crossover:
– Open Finder and go to the View menu at the top of your screen. Select the Show View Options menu item. Make sure to check the Show Library Folder check box.
– Under your user folder, select Library > Application Support > Crossover > Bottles > CC3Plus > drive c > users > Public > Application Data > Profantasy > CC3Plus. Notice the files appear in that folder.

Moving the CC3Plus Folder for Easy Access

– After you’ve located your CC3Plus folder I suggest dragging it into your Favorites menu on the left side of the Finder. That way the CC3Plus folder will always be accessible with a single click.

I also keep a My Designs folder under Documents. I save my maps to this folder rather than the CC3Plus folder within Crossover, just so I have easier access to my maps—especially the ones I save as JPG or PNG files and wish to share or upload.

In the Dock

You can add CC3+ to your dock like other Mac applications by simply dragging its icon down into the dock.

Renaming the Program

If you install Campaign Cartographer and forget to rename it, you can fix this by selecting the gear icon at the bottom of the Crossover screen and clicking the Rename menu option. You’ll notice that your program icons suddenly vanish. To restore them, select the Configure menu option at the top of your screen and select Clear and Rebuild Programs and choose the option to rebuild them. The icons should reappear in your menu.

Thanks

Special thanks to Ryan Sturt, Rob Heath, and Ralf Schemmann—the true pioneers—for advice, education, and input on how to successfully run Campaign Cartographer on the Mac.

Bio
Steve Townshend is a freelance writer who has worked for several game companies including Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Pelgrane, and Sasquatch. Recent design work includes Dungeons & Dragons 5e (Monster Manual, Dungeon Master’s Guide), and Princes of the Apocalypse for Sasquatch Studios. Here are a few of my maps.

City Designer 3 now works with CC3+. It has shiney new icons, and you can make use of the lighting speed and new effects of CC3+ to create your city maps.

So, if you own CC3+ and City Designer 3, head over to your registration page and download the free compatibilty update – CD3 Setup for CC3+. You’ll find the link among the City Designer 3 files on the Downloads & Updates tab.

It took a few weeks to create this update, because we had to polish up the House and Street tools, as their code wasn’t working properly with the updated CC3+ programming. The House is some of the earliest we wrote – it goes all the back to the tools we used to create the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas.

The good news is that most of the upcoming compatibility updates don’t need much additional programming. Updating their templates, symbols and drawing tools will be a more straightforward process. Next up is Character Artist 3.

If you are a subscriber to the current Cartographer’s Annual, the April issue (Black and White Towns), which makes use of the City Designer tools, is now also available for CC3+.

We’ve been working hard on making the add-ons compatible with CC3+. It’s not straightforward, as not only maps and templates need to be updated, but interactions with our polished, updated code and the legacy code in add-on functions can cause new bugs in legacy to rear their ugly heads. It does mean that add-on code gets a polish, too. So, we are please to announce that a much faster, CC3+ compatible Dungeon Designer 3 with all-new icons is now ready.

You’ll first need to update your CC3+ to the latest version (3.66). You’ll find the update among your downloads for CC3+ on the registration page. Or if you haven’t installed CC3+ yet – perhaps you were waiting for it to work with DD3 – download the latest full setup for CC3+.

Then you can download the DD3 compatibility update for CC3+ from your registration page and install it. It will add all Dungeon Designer functionality to CC3+. Enjoy!

In addition to preparing CC3+ for DD3, the Update 1 fixes some additional bugs that came up during the early adopter phase and adds some additional resources. Here is the list:

CC3+ Version 3.66

• added CC3 Overland Hex style
• added Text drawing tools to Mike Schley Overland style
• added “Open Autosave File” option to the File menu
• includes preparation for DD3 integration
• updated tutorial maps with current effect settings
• Insert File fixed to recognise @ path
• Symbol Manager display fixed to show all Symbols
• Control points fixed to work in CC3+
• Templates fixed to correctly swap fill style resolutions
• restored drawing dialogs to the Draw Menu: Path, Polygon, Circle, Arc, Lines, Offset
• fixed some DPI scaling issues in the Symbol Manager

[Ed’s note: this great tutorial introducing editing was written by new CC3+ user R A Jacobs who is on a mission to learn CC3+ – follow his journey here. It features the first map by another brand new CC3+ user Kalthorine. See his original post on the forum.]

Before We Start…

Selecting something on a screen by pointing and clicking is a very common activity that you probably do hundreds of times a day on a computer. When you think about it, it’s like picking things up with your fingers. You move the mouse to the icon that you want to open, or move, or delete; you select it by clicking on it and then you do some action. Modern User Experience Designers have made selecting objects on a screen very easy; often times, you only need to click within the vicinity of an object in order to select it.

And, what I learned this weekend, is that that is one of the reasons why you fail when you try to do just about anything in Campaign Cartographer.

Whaaaaaat?

Before you learn to do anything in Campaign Cartographer, you have to remember a few things:

1. This is professional software.   While some people report having no problems at all picking up the tool, for most, there is a learning curve; you have to both unlearn old habits and pick up new ones.  In some cases, there is a level of precision that is required in order to accomplish a task.
2. This is CAD software.  As I’ve learned, CAD software works opposite of the way you are probably used to working with most desktop applications (at least on Windows).  Instead of selecting something on the screen and choosing what to do with it (noun->verb:  “This mountain, delete”), CAD software asks you to tell it what you want to do and to what objects you’d like to do it (verb->noun: “Delete this mountain”).  The advantage of this approach is that you can execute the same action over and over quickly.
3. Watch the Command Line (CC3) at the bottom of your screen.  The Command Line is how CC3 communicates with you and provides hints on what you need to do next. CC3+ adds a new feature called a Command Prompt that provides more detailed instructions which float near the tip of your pointer to reduce the chance that you’ll miss them.  A great feature when you are learning this tool!
4. An entity is an element, object, symbol, line, whatever on the map.  Anything drawn in the Drawing Window is an entity.  Keep that in mind.

Overview

For this post, I’m going to use the Khalkaeareon map created and posted by Kalthorine to the ProFantasy Community Forums.  Be sure to grab the map, not just the image of the map.

There are many ways to select something on a map in Campaign Cartographer 3+.  I tend to think of these options in terms of “Fundamental” and “Advanced” techniques.

Over the next two posts, we are going to look at what I consider to be the “Fundamental” select techniques.  Part 1, today’s post, will cover:

• Select All
• Select by Layer
• Select by Window
• Select by Clicking the Edge of an Entity
• Deselect an Entity

In Part 2, we will take on:

• Select by Entity Type
• Select by Entity Tag Number
• Select Prior

At some point in the future, we’ll cover the following “Advanced” techniques.  I haven’t yet had a lot of reason to experiment with these so I want to better understand the mapping situations best solved by these tools:

• Select by Color
• Select by Line/Fill Style
• And, Or, Not:  Adding to or removing from a group of selected entities

Let’s get started…

Select All

Why You May Want To Use This Approach:  You want to keep the template, tools, etc. that you have created for a particular map but you want to start the entire map over from scratch.  In more advanced cases, you want to keep everything on two or more layers but get rid of everything else.

By far one of the easiest ways to select entities in Campaign Cartographer is to just select all of them.  For now, let’s just assume you want to erase everything on a map and start over – but you don’t want to pick a new template or anything like that.

1. Click the “Erase” button from the”Edit” toolbox to the left of the Symbol Catalog.
2. Move your cursor to the Drawing Window.  In CC3, take note of the Command Line, it reads “Select Entities (0 picked):”.  In CC3+, you get this same text on both the Command Line and Command Prompt.
3. Right-click.  Select “All” from the pop-up menu.
4. Every entity on the map is selected.  The invisible outlines are presented in pink so you can see what you have selected.
5. Right-click. Select “Do it” to execute the “Erase” command (or whatever command you selected).

The goal of this tutorial is not to teach you how to erase entities, just select them.  We’ll leave it there.

Select by Layer

Why You May Want To Use This Approach:  You want to move everything on a single layer to a different layer; you want to erase everything on a single layer.

Next to Select All, selecting everything on a layer is easiest.

Over the weekend – you know, when I supposed to be making maps not learning about “Select” – Select by Layer came in handy.

I was following the Campaign Cartographer 3+ User Guide Tutorial on “Converting Your Old Maps” (pp. 84-86) and I kept getting stuck on Step 6.  By Step 6, you’ve loaded up and scaled a bitmap or PNG image of your old maps when you discover that your old map is just a bit smaller than what you want your new map to be so you’ve got to move and scale the old map.  You are going to do this by first aligning the inside corners of the two maps.  To do this, you need to select edge of the bitmap (“With the crosshairs, click in the lower left corner of the old map.”).

I could not get it done¹. It. was. so. frustrating.

It is, in fact, my inability to select a bitmap that led to the creation of this post.  Since the bitmap was on its own layer, a very simple way to have accomplished this would have been to Select by Layer.

To illustrate a practical use of this Select approach, let’s say you want to move everything from the MINERALS/MOUNTAINS layer to another.  To make a change like that, the tool you want to use is the “Change Properties” tool.

1. Click the “Change Properties” button from the”Edit” toolbox to the left of the Symbol Catalog. If you look at Figure 1, above, it is the button immediately to the right of the Erase button.
2. Move your cursor to the Drawing Window.  In CC3, take note of the Command Line, it reads “Select Entities (0 picked):”.  In CC3+, you get this same text on the Command Line and, additionally, in the Command Prompt along with more detailed instructions.  See Figure 2, above.  It will be similar.
3. Right-click.  Select “Layer” from the pop-up menu.
4. Right-click.  The “Select Layer” Dialog window will pop-up.  Click the furthest left box on the MINERALS/MOUNTAINS row and click “OK”.
   1. Alternatively, if you know the name of the Layer you want to select, you could just type its name.
   2. In CC3, you type the Layer name on the Command Line
   3. In CC3+, as you type, the Layer name will appear in the floating instruction text near your pointer and on the Command Prompt.
5. Every entity on the Layer is selected.  You can verify this two ways. First, the invisible outlines are presented in pink so you can see what you have selected, just like in Figure 3, above.  Second, the Command Line reads “Select entities (287 picked):”.  If you have CC3+, the floating Command Prompt reads “Select entities to change properties [287 selected]:”
6. Right-click. Select “Do it” to execute the “Change Properties” command or whatever command you selected.

Once again, we aren’t really learning about moving entities between layers so we are going to leave off at this point and move on to the next task.

Select by Window

Why You May Want To Use This Approach:  You want to select more than one entity within a specific area of your map in order to move the group to another area of the map.  You want to select a tight grouping of related objects and change their properties.  You want to select a tight grouping of related objects and delete them.  Lots more.

Select All and Select by Layer are very ham-fisted tools. They select a lot of entities without a lot of finesse.  They have their place but, most of the time, you are going to want to work with a few entities at a time.

To start to get finer control over what you select, you can actually define a Window to select multiple items within an area at the same time.  To use this technique, you select two points on opposite corners of an imaginary rectangle (“Window”).  Everything inside the window is selected.

For this select exercise, let us assume that we want to move a the cluster of towers from near Drakenhold in the Upper Left Corner of the Khalkaraeon map.

1. Click the “Move” button from the”Edit” toolbox to the left of the Symbol Catalog. See Figure 4.
2. Move your cursor to the Drawing Window.  In CC3, take note of the Command Line, it reads “Select Entities (0 picked):”.  In CC3+, you get this same text on the Command Line and, additionally, in the Command Prompt along with more detailed instructions.  See Figure 2, above.  It will be similar.
3. Right-click.  Select “Window” from the pop-up menu.
4. You are now going to define a “box”.  Pick some point to the upper left of the group of entities you want to select and click.
5. Pick a point to the lower right of the group of entities to select.  As you move your cursor down and to the left, a “box” will grow around the group of entities you want to select.  When the box surrounds the entities you want to select, click again.
6. Every entity intersected by the box will be selected and will either turn pink or be surrounded by a pink border.  See Figure 5.
7. Right-click. Select “Do it” to execute the “Move” command or whatever command you selected.

There are some gotchas that go along with this approach.  This approach works on the concept of “intersection”.  Any entities that fall within the boundaries of the Window you define are going to be selected.  Because symbols frequently overlap, there is a good chance that you may pick up entities that you did not intend.  In Figure 5, I was trying to select just the three towers towards the middle of the image.  I got a lot more than I wanted.

So what can you do?  Here are a few ideas:

1. Reserve this approach for areas of the map where there are not a lot of overlapping symbols or other entities.
2. Zoom-in close and use very small Windows to limit how many symbols potentially overlap your window.
3. Deselect the entities you did not intend to grab.
4. Freeze the layers containing the entities you do not want to select.

Select by Clicking the Edge of an Entity

Why You May Want To Use This Approach: You want to execute a command on one entity – most likely to delete or move it.  You want to execute a command on a few entities from among a group of entities – most likely to delete or to move them.

Now we are zeroing in on it.  You want to select a single entity and execute a command on that entity.  To do this, you have to click on the edge of the entity.  Ah…but that’s the rub: Where is the edge of the entity?  You keep clicking the symbol you want to select and all you get is a cross-hair and you wonder, why can’t I pick up this symbol?!

If you look at either Figure 3 or Figure 5 above, you will see a pink colored box around the entities that are selected.  This is not the edge of the entity.  Let’s call this the “border”.

If you look at any sufficiently styled symbol, you will find a lot of edges within the icon. Again, this is not the edge of the entity.  Let’s call these the “lines” that define the symbol.  The edge of an entity is a line.

The core problem is that you expect Campaign Cartographer to work like your Windows machine.  In Windows, you click in the center of an icon on the screen to use it.  That’s not how it works in Campaign Cartographer (remember those habits I said you needed to unlearn in the Overview, above? Yeah. This is one of them.)

The edge of the entity is defined by the outer lines of the symbol regardless of where the border of the entity may be. To select by clicking the “edge of an entity” you must click the outer lines of the entity.  Clicking a line/edge in the middle of the entity will not select the entity.

In my (albeit limited) experience, it is much easier to select a single entity by working up close.  For this particular select exercise, let’s us assume that you want to move Drakenhold castle in the Upper Left corner of the Khalkaraeon map.

1. Find Drakenhold castle on the map.  It is in the Upper Left corner of the map.
2. Zoom in.  You can do this from the View -> Zooms -> In By 2 menu item, the Zoom buttons on the upper far right toolbar, or by right-clicking and choosing one of the Zoom options.  Get in close.  See Figure 6.
3. Click the “Move” button (see Figure 4, above, if you are not sure where the button is).
4. Move your cursor to the edge of the castle and click.  The symbol or entity should either turn pink or be surrounded by a pink border.  See Figure 7.
5. Look at the Command Line and Command Prompt (if you are using CC3+).  The Command Line should read “Selected Entities (1 picked):”.  The Command Prompt should read “Select Entities to Move, Scale, Rotate [1 picked]:”.
6. If you want to add more entities to the group, repeat Steps 1-5 until you’ve selected all the entities you want to manipulate.  Keep an eye on the Command Line / Command Prompt to ensure that you are only picking up the entities you expect to pick up.
7. When you are done selecting individual entities, right-click and select “Do It” to execute the “Move” command or whatever command you chose.

In Step 5, if the “Selected Entities” count is 0 or greater than 1, you’ve either failed to select the castle or you picked up something in addition.  You need to deselect and try again.

Deselect an Entity

Why You May Want To Use This Approach:  Using another approach, you’ve selected one or more entities that you did not intend to select.  Before you complete your command sequence, you need to reduce the number of entities selected.

As you seek finer and finer control over the number of entities you want to select, you are going to select entities that you did not intend to select.  Before you right-click and select “Do it”, you need to clean up the collection of selected entities.

First, double-check the Command Line and the Command Prompt to see how many entities are currently picked.  If you think you’ve got 1 but the command line says you’ve got more, you’ve got clean-up to do.

There are two basic ways to deselect an entity.  You can choose to cancel the command or deselect entities one at a time.

Cancel the Command

1. Complete Steps 1-6 of Select by Window but only try to select a few entities.
2. Right-click and select “Cancel” from the pop-up menu.
3. The items are no longer selected.

But wait! If the items are no longer selected, why are they still surrounded by a pink border?  To save resources, the Drawing Window does not refresh after every command.  If you still see pink borders, click the Redraw button to the upper right (see Figure 8), use View > Redraw or type CTRL-R.   If the pink border does not go away, then you did not deselect the entity.

Deselect Entities One At A Time

1. Complete Steps 1-6 of Select by Clicking the Edge of an Entity.  Select 3 entities.
2. With three entities selected, press and hold the CTRL key while you select one of the 3 entities you just selected.
3. The Command Line count of Selected Entities should decrease by 1.

In general, any time something doesn’t quite look right on the map, it is probably a good idea to “Redraw”.  To clean up my drawing left-overs, I find myself doing this frequently after deselecting entities and executing other commands.

My gut tells me that if I want to get good at Campaign Cartographer – to really master it – I need to spend time really learning these fundamental skills.  Just from playing around with these techniques and then writing them down for your benefit has been extremely helpful to me.

How about you?  Did any of this help? Do you have a trick for selecting objects within CC3 that gets you out of tricky situations?  What is it?  Leave a comment and tell me about it.

1. I wanted to do it “the right way” and follow the instructions verbatim so I could be certain I was learning the skill required. Yeah. Don’t do that. It doesn’t matter. The upside, is that I learned a lot anyway…about other ways to select items.