🎬️ Videos: Autosave

If you don't like that autosave prompt popping up all the time while you work, it may be tempting to just hit the disable autosave button. But don't do that. You can still have autosaves without the prompt. Just right click the :CC2SAVE: button and pick Autosave, and you can control the frequency of the save as well as turning off the prompt.

Keep in mind that there are only a single autosave file shared between drawings, so if you have a crash, you should immediately open the autosave file (Open Autosave Drawing from the file menu) and then use Save As to save it under a new name.

🎬️ Videos: Sheets for symbols and tools

To help you get your entities on the correct sheet without you having to remember to set the correct sheet all the time, most symbols and drawing tools in CC3+ is configured to select their own sheet, completely ignoring whatever you have set as your current sheet. For example, most symbols will automatically go to the SYMBOLS sheet, with some exceptions for some kinds of symbols.

This system is written to be flexible, because what your symbols look for when placing them isn't actually the SYMBOLS sheet, but any sheet starting with the word SYMBOLS. This means that if you need your trees to end up on a dedicated sheet, all you ha to to is to make your trees sheet named SYMBOLS TREES. Now, if SYMBOLS TREES is your active sheet, the symbols will be placed there, otherwise they will go to the plain old SYMBOLS sheet as before. So by carefully naming your sheets, you'll have the system work with you.

For symbols, you can always check what sheet they wish to use by going into the symbol manager and checking the options for a symbol there. The Force Sheet option is what controls that behavior. You'll find that most symbols are set up with SYMBOLS* as their sheet. It is that asterisk (*) at the end that makes it look for sheets starting with symbols. If that asterisk is missing, it will always go to the sheet named SYMBOLS, no matter what your current sheet starts with.

Drawing tools are the same. You can check what sheet they use by hitting the advanced button in the drawing tool dialog, and then the options button to see the setting for the selected tool. Be careful about changing anything in here, as these settings apply globally to that tool, not just in the current map, and there is no reset to default button. If you want to make changes, create a copy of the tool and change that instead.

🎬️ Videos: Short tutorial +++ Intro video about sheets

This happens because of sheet order. For performance reasons, when you place a symbol (or other entity), it is always displayed on top of everything else, until you do something that redraws the screen, such as scrolling, zooming or hitting the :CC2REDRAW: button, as this causes the view to be redrawn, and entities such as symbols will be drawn in their actual position in the drawing order

If your symbol disappeared when you did that, it is an indication that it was placed on a sheet below something else that covers it up. Most symbols and tools choose their own sheet, but if you were using one that didn't do that, it might be that your active sheet is low in the order, or perhaps you have another entity late in the drawing order that covers up things it shouldn't.

You can check which sheet an entity is on by using the List command in the Info menu, or you can try to temporarily hide some of the sheets in the list. There are multiple ways to move an entity to a different sheet, but :CC2MCHANGE: is a good way.

Remember that when CC3+ draws entities on screen, it starts with the top sheet in the list and draws that to the screen, then it goes to the next one, and draws the content of that sheet on top of what's already been drawn and so on. This means that entities on sheets later (further down) in the sheet list will appear on top of things earlier (further up) in the list, and the entities on the very bottom sheet will appear on top of everything else.

🎬️ Videos: Fixing Selection

At times you may find that selections doesn't work properly. For example a command that expects you to select something (such as the erase command) just seem to terminate without allowing you to selecting things at all, or it might appear to select things automatically.

This is caused by the fact that CC3+ has different selection methods for different purposes, and sometimes the wrong one may be enabled (often caused by a macro that didn't complete properly).

To fix it, select Options from the Tools menu, then hit the Select method button and make sure that the selection method is set to "dialog or Popup". Make sure to just hit OK to exit out of the dialogs, and your selections should work as before.

If you don't mind using the CC3+ command line, this can also be fixed by just typing SELBYD followed by enter.

?️ Further Reading: Selections

🎬️ Videos: Drawing tools for new fills +++ (also watch these for more context: Short video about fills +++ Longer video about fill styles)

Drawing Tools in CC3+ are more than just a list of fills. If you look at the full list in any given map (:CC2DRAWTOOLS:) you'll se that they have different shapes, some have outlines of different widths, some are lines, some are filled entities and so on. Drawing Tools are all manually crafted tools for common features of the current map style, they're not automatically created from the fills in the map.

Instead, to find fills you have imported, click the FS: (Fill Style) indicator in the top right, and go to the Bitmap Files tab. The dropdown here lists all the fill styles in the current map. From here, you can pick the one to use, and then use the basic tools in the right hand toolbar to draw entities using this fill. Keep in mind that when using these basic tools, they don't set anything automatically like the drawing tools do, you manually have to set all the correct properties first by clicking the elements on the status bar, such as fill, line width, sheet and layer.

You can also make new drawing tools yourself utilizing your new fills. In the drawing tools window, hit the Advanced button to start editing. From here, pick one of the tools you'd like to use as a starting point, then hit the New button to make a clone of the selected tool. Now, make sure your copy is the selected one, and yhen access the properties to set it up to use one of your new fills