A lot of the real-world fold-out maps I've used tend to have the key all across the base margin of the map, often with other items down the sides, or scattered in various other parts on or off the map - often wherever there's some convenient areas of open sea (given they're primarily UK maps I've used in this regard, and the sea's never that far from anywhere here!).

In this case, it seems to me the key is such an essential part of the map, with items that would otherwise have been written directly onto the places themselves, had space and clarity allowed, the lower-central placement is fully justified, and makes the whole drawing look more balanced. Setting the key to the lower right would unbalance the whole composition uncomfortably to my eye.

Less time than I'd hoped today for mapping, but a bit more progress, and things are starting to look a little more organised. Sort of!

Yes, I know the alignments aren't all quite the same between the different boxes. I ended up sorting things together for an image too rapidly and didn't have time for fine-tuning! However, the main part of the drawing's done now, and although the Dracula Dossier style doesn't usually use much, if anything, by way of effects, I felt the roofs looked too flat without some shadows, so much of today's effort went into getting those to look acceptable, subject to further tweaking, as ever (the roof towers stand out quite nicely now; perhaps a little too strongly though). The sixth, empty, box is there for a reason, mostly that it's currently anchoring the 0,0 point, so I don't forget where it is. The final layout's still not fixed in my mind, never mind in the drawing!

Away from the drawing, I've also been jotting down some notes for the Atlas PDF and textfile description, since that may have implications for features on the plans as well. One new item has already been added as a direct result of that. Not saying what, though it is fairly obvious in comparing yesterday's images to this one!

Also, and not sure if it may be something I've done or not, but the style doesn't seem to load the Dossier's symbols on opening the map. I noticed it yesterday too, and forgot to say then. I had a quick look at the On Open macro, and there may be an error in that, as it points at Symbols\Modern\Floorplans\Dracula_Symbols.FSC, whereas I think it should be pointing at Symbols\Modern\Floorplans\Dracula Dossier\Simple.FSC (according to the notes in the PDF mapping guide, at least; probably also should be "Dracula_Dossier"?). Haven't tried changing the On Open macro yet to check - time again! - and I'm no expert, but maybe someone else here could give it a try to see?

Sorry @Loopysue, didn't see your message earlier and haven't done that yet, though it looks as if there may be something else to sort for this style pack now anyway!

@Maidhc O Casain - I'm not sure I've ever mapped something that hasn't needed some kind of tweaking like this, either to change the look of a fill style, or tweak the effects, and that can sometimes be quite a battle. I think it's not really being sure what some of the parameters you can change mean in terms of whatever mapping scale you're using. The fact some of the effects work to completely different methods than what they seem to (the classic being the percentages for glow strengths and so forth, which actually go only in 12.5% steps) just complicates matters more!

Oops, forgot to mention that I found a small glitch with the fill styles in Dracula's Dossier. The "Floor, Roof S" (= roof tile south-facing) tool is using the west style's fill, so needs swapping out (the "Roof 270" style needs replacing with the "Roof 180" one when you have the Fill Style Properties window open, essentially).

As this map's so small in scale, I had quite a battle getting the fill styles rescaled correctly more generally, especially the cobbled flooring for the backyard, which has a "Fog" fill that overlies the cobbles, to make them look worn and damaged. The Fog was so dense, all it showed as was white until I'd scaled it down to something I felt sure would be too tiny to work!

And thanks Sue!

Today, I've managed more, and relatively speaking, things have moved on some way from that. This is with the CD3 rooftop bitmaps still showing:

and this is it without:

Clearly, there's still lots to do - the roofing needs adding over the lower floor extension and porch on the upper floor plan, for instance, and other items need adding and tweaking in places. Such as a scale and the labelling! Plus I've decided life will be easier to reorient the north direction than the floorplans, and have rotated the surrounding buildings (or now technically building blanks) to suit that.

At some point, I'll need to work up some notes to go with this for the Atlas of course, though the map has the sharper deadline, obviously. The observant may notice the grille in the cellar. The local ghouls like to use the fabulous sewer network to get about unseen, especially after they created tunnels between the sewers and the cemetery beyond the city's northern wall. The ambiance of this haunted house - I'm thinking now "Cloven House" currently - and the fact nobody comes near the place ordinarily, makes it ideal for their feasts!

By the time I'd chosen a property to map the floorplans for from Vertshusen for this contest, I already had some ideas as to what it was going to be, and what mapping style I'd be going with. The chosen property is that marked by the red square in the SE corner of the walled area:

My initial thoughts had revolved around a haunted house theme, and because I've already done quite a bit of mapping for the Community Atlas using some of the more realistic floorplan styles, quickly decided I wanted to do something different. For me, part of the point in participating in the Atlas is to experiment with new ideas and different mapping styles.

Three possible styles were uppermost in mind, all very similar tech-drawing styles, the 1930s Travel Guide Floorplans from the April 2011 Cartographer's Annual, the 1800s Floorplans from April 2016, and the one I finally selected, the Dracula Dossier style from September 2015. Haunted house, after all!

However, I also took a look through the PDF of "Hobbs' Architecture", which was a recommended freely-available download from the Internet Archive site, mentioned in the mapping guide and webpage for the 1800s Floorplan style, to get a feel for what house layouts should look like and contain in this general type of map appearance.

The working title for the map was "The House That Wasn't There", as I had vague early ideas of creating a building that wasn't always there. Indeed, one initial concept had been to pick a completely empty space in the city, and map the house into that, only I couldn't find a space large enough!

Which building was chosen was partly down to something that looked interesting, that was also a little out of the way, and the final choice was swayed after I was drawn to one of the smaller buildings in "Hobbs'":

which just looked interesting, and had some features not dissimilar to the building in Vertshusen. The size and scaling weren't the same of course, as the Vertshusen buildings are uniformly tiny by contrast to the structures in "Hobbs'". It was a starting point though.

Having measured the house size on the Vertshusen FCW, I set up a suitable template in the Dracula Dossier style, and then directly imported (copy & pasted) the "Wasn't" House and its neighbouring properties, setting "my" house down in the centre of the map border area.

Of course, it's angled as originally drawn, and as others have commented in topics for this mapping contest already, that's not the friendliest layout for drawing rectilinear structures. So I copied the house again, and rotated it to better suit, and then copied that twice more (as my initial idea was for a ground floor plan, an upper floor plan, and a further plan for the two taller roof towers. I also imported copied scans from the Hobbs' book as reminders for the overall look of the plans, setting them up on their own Sheet with a Transparency Effect, so I could position them over the CD3 house roof and get a better idea of what might go where. And then started drawing. This illustrates where I'd got to with the drawings when I ran out of time yesterday: