New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[Antindies]

Thanks very much. I have noticed zooming in makes it better, but as you say it's hard to go through the whole map that way! OK, I'll try the fill & stroke panel, I thought the bucket was just a shortcut for that. The hatch patters you mention I don't see, I have only one diagonal stripe available and the narrowest version is 1:1.

Thanks again.

[ChickPea]

Do you not have a dropdown menu in the pattern fill area (this is on the Fill & Stroke panel)? There's a list of various patterns and sizes there. I mean, the default Inkscape patterns are not that exciting, but there should be more than one pattern. I have horizontal stripes in black & white of various sizes, plus some other bits and bobs like checkerboard, polka dot etc. You can resize/rotate each pattern on the canvas too.

And just for clarity, the bucket fill tool is completely apart from the fill & stroke tool. They operate differently and aren't a shortcut for each other (though I can see why you would think that). If your shape is closed (no gaps in the line), just click it once to select it, then click a random colour swatch at the bottom of the page, and your shape will be filled with the new colour instantly, without any faffing around.

[Antindies]

Excellent, thank you!

[Darkmage1337]

Interesting read.
What category would Wonderdraft fall under on this software program list?

[thanhnguyen1910]

thanks you i like page so much

[Anestis]

I went with a free software, Autorealm, because the tool layout reminded me of AutoCad. It did okay for a simple dungeon map, I had no issues. But when I finished an hour and a halfs work on just the out line of a small continent, it could not save the file which I had been saving thru out the drawing process. That's when I remembered why I quit using it years ago. My question is this: has anyone who uses Campaign Cartoropher 3 run into any issues like this? It would make me more than mad to buy a program, and have it do the same thing to me. Thank you for your response.

[Greason Wolfe]

GAH! Wrong thread. Please ignore the Wolfe behind the curtain. Clearly he is not paying attention to what he is doing.

[skaForge]

Welcome.

As to the learning curve for CC3, I have heard it is steep, but I just don't see it. Not to sound facetious or anything, but I have a harder time trying to grasp the concepts of photoshop

If you pick up CC3, my biggest word of advice is this. Follow the Tutorials that come with it, (or locate the tutorials for CC2, only difference between the two is the look of the map), and you should do fine.

My tool set: GIMP, Inkscape, Affinity Suite, ancient Wacom Bamboo (any recs on what I should replace that with? Linux & MS os's in house). Trained on Qgis/GRASS, and then ArcGIS academically, and then used both in business. But those two have little cross-over into this type of cartography! I hear you on that PS learning curve. Used to use PS, LR, ID, but when they went to the SaS model, I started looking for alternates, and their deep-dive into AI sent me running from them completely. Learning Adobe, especially for use in my photography, was painful, and ongoing. Nope, I'm over that.