Having a lot of difficulty selecting a single entity on my map

Hi, all... I just purchased CC3+ today, and I'm going through the tutorial in the manual. I've gotten to the point where I've added a bunch of hills to the top left corner of my map, but I decided to digress from the tutorial for a moment, because I wanted to move a couple of the hills entities.

Not so easy. First off, I cannot see the edges of the entities, so clicking on the edge of the entity I want is a complete crapshoot. I have not yet successfully clicked on the edge of the hills I want.

I thought I'd try using a selection window to select more than I want, and then deselecting the ones I don't want (because at least I can see the edges of things that are already selected). This doesn't work either, because ctrl-clicking on the edge of one of the other hills entities doesn't de-select it. All it does is start a selection window.

I'm about ready to put my fist through a wall at this point. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. Nothing is frozen. Nothing is locked. It's just a bunch of hills on very sparsely populated map. I know there's a learning curve, but I'm following all the instructions and suggestions I've found using a Google search. Still no luck.

Thanks for indulging a newbie.

Comments

  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 81 images Cartographer
    edited September 2020

    Symbols are selected by the visible edge of the symbol, not the actual outer edge of the image where the pink selection rectangle is.

  • Okay, that helped. I'm having slightly better luck now. It's still very tricky, especially when you have a bunch of entities together, some overlapping each other, but at least I now have a fighting chance to select what I want. I'll keep practicing. Thank you very much for replying.

  • edited September 2020

    To deselect entities press "N" (the shortcut for the logical "NOT" function), or right-click and then "combine"->"not"

    Often you can fine tune a multiple selection by using "and(both)" from the combine menu (shortcut is "B" I think) and then using "entity type", "layer", or "color" none of which will help when picking one out of a group of hills.

    What might help though is using "and(both)" and then dragging a selection window from the opposite side of the entity you want to pick.

  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer

    I use these two keys a lot:

    SHIFT - hold down SHIFT to select more than one by clicking each one in succession while holding the key.

    CTRL - same as SHIFT, but it allows you to deselect individual items from the selection.

    Raiko
  • Oh, I didn't know about CTRL (and assumed from @faltarego's post that it was a mistake).

    I've just checked - you learn something new everyday.

    By the way falterego - your "selection window" when holding down CTRL is actually a deselection window, so would do what you want.

    Sue, I'm not sure what holding SHIFT is doing? Clicking multiple entities adds them to the selection anyway with the default "combine>OR" selection.

  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer

    You know, Raiko, you're absolutely right. SHIFT doesn't do anything in particular. I just hold it down anyway because I do it with Blender when I'm selecting all the models I've made to move them around.

    I blame using too many different apps with too many different shortcuts.

    Sorry falterego. Ignore what I said about SHIFT. But the CTRL keyboard shortcut is definitely a thing.

    Raiko
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