Yea, there is actually a white polygon around most maps by default, on the SCREEN sheet, it is used to hide stuff that might be sticking outside the map border, since a drawing is technically borderless. But the printer will still see that as a valid area to include int he printing.

What you can do to avoid it is to print just the 'active window' instead of 'everything'. Before doing that, simply zoom in to your map, and maybe resize the CC3+ window accordingly so that the view only shows your actual map, nothing more. The best way do do this is to first use the Zoom Window command to define a tight rectangle around your map, and then resize the window afterwards, because CC3+ will remember the zoom you defined and always fit that part inside the window. Also remember, CC3+ do have the map in a separate inner document window, you can resize that instead of the main CC3+ window.

If you just want to fill the page, simply use the "fit to page" option in the print dialog, no need messing with precise scaling. CC3+ should fill whatever paper size your printer driver reports it is using.

For proper scaled maps, yes, just use 1" paper scale = 5' drawing distance. All you need to do to make that work properly is when making the map, treat the numbers you specify the map size in in the wizard as feet, and just work with the map in real scale, i.e. when a distance should be 5', Info -> distance should show that thing to be 5'.

Seems like that fill is set up with a darker fill than those used in the map.

There are a couple of ways to fix it:

1- Fixing it in-map:

1. Draw the entity
2. Unlock groups ("Locked" button in the very bottom right of the UI)
3. Hit Change Properties
4. Right click in map, pick More -> Fill Style
5. Right click to bring up the fill style dialog, pick the bitmap file tab
6. Select CA101_Parchment from the dropdown, make sure the radio button for "this is the currently selected fill style" is enabled, and hit ok
7. Hit D for do it
8. In the Change properties dialog, set fill style to CA128_Parchment A Light and hit ok
9. Lock groups again.

(Edit. Forget the second way I just typed for now. Seems like there is something else happening when the tool is used. Investigating.)

Note that the fills here are all hatch styles, meaning they are vector entities, so map performance will not be much better compared to just using symbols, but it will certainly be easier to map larger regions.

While I am more than happy for you to make a local map out of that area for the atlas if you want to do that, it is after all quite a large area that might contain lots more villages than seen on the rather large-scale main map (Just check out that local map already made in that small rectangular area in the middle), remember that the competition is about creating a map of a single village, so I wouldn't be able to accept such an area map for the competition.

Of course, if you want to make a local area map, and then a village map of one of the villages in the new local area map, that would be perfectly fine, but otherwise, you should pick one of the villages in the area to map, not the entire area.

As I have just posted the competition for the 1000th atlas map, I will have to suspend regular submissions for a while. After all, since the competition is about the 1000th map, I don't want any side submission sneaking in and pushing us over outside the competition.

I may accept a few, since we are still 13 maps short, but no big map dumps until after September.