These tools use a raster image for their fill, which is just a 1-pixel image with either a black and white pixel. This image is set up with built-in transparency. You'll find these fills in the fills list as Solid 10, Solid 20, ... Solid 90 and Solid White 10, ... Solid White 90, where the number indicates the opacity (10 is almost fully transparent, 90 is almost fully opaque).

When overlaid other elements in the map, the pixels below are mixed with that fill according to the transparency level of the fill, thereby serving to lighten or darken whatever they overlay.

Sorry about your job. Hope this situation normalizes soon so people can get back to their jobs, or at least have an easier time finding a new one when not everyone is trying to hunt in the same limited pool.

At least the time isn't wasted when you spend it mapping :)

I can't make all potential useful topics sticky, the front page would just be a long list of stickies, which is not very user-friendly. Instead, it is listed in the resources category, which you can find directly from the left-hand navigation menu (Helpful resources and FAQ link)

These tools should work just as fine on Metric as Imperial overland maps.

I know they don't work as well in small-scale maps as large scale maps though. What is the size of those maps (the dimensions you entered in the new map wizard)?

Also, have you modified the symbol scale from the default value in the map?

In any case, if you are not happy with the distribution after running the tool, simply undo once, as this removes the trees but leaves behind the background polygon, then immediately run the Draw -> Symbols in Area command. This will bring up the dialog with the same setting the tool just used. Then modify the distances in the pattern section, hit ok, and pick the background poly you created with the tool. This will fill it with your new settings. If you still didn't quite like the result, undo once to remove the trees you just placed, and repeat. When you find a setting you like, you can save it (but I recommend NOT saving over the existing setting used by the tool, make your own)

There isn't any restore to default feature except reinstalling. When you change the symbol catalogs, you do changes to the actual catalog and configuration files, and these are persistent. There are no "default settings" for most things in CC3+, other than to replace the various files with clean versions.

If it is just the map settings in a single map that is messed up, causing it to load wrong catalogs and tools, you need to hit :CC2PRESETS: and set the map style back to the correct style for that map type, and if you have changed the OnOpenMacro map note, revert it back to the original settings by just copying the macro commands from a fresh map in the same style.

Note that if it is a single map, reinstalling will NOT help, as that won't change your map.

Just reinstalling the latest update won't help when restoring files to default, as that only replaces files contained in the update, i.e. things that have been updated since release, to restore original files you need to run the original installer (CC3+ base or add-on, depending on what you want to fix), and then re-run the latest update after doing that.

The best option is to keep the template lines in a clean file.

If you copy them over to another (temporary) map, you can just go wild in that one, deleting all the fill styles. You'd have to do it manually, but at least you don't need to consider which to keep and which to delete, just do them all. Then you can copy the lines from this clean file afterwards.

(You may want to save that temporary map every now and then, mass deleting fill styles sometimes causes CC3+ to crash)

Unless you need to spend a lot of that on a graphics card (which won't do anything for CC3+, but if you plan to use the computer for gaming, you may want one), the 13th generation Intel i5's are pretty good, both in actual performance, and value for money. If you can get an i5-13600K, I would go for it.

Recommend getting 16GB of RAM. CC3+ itself can't use more than 4, but your OS and other programs want their chunk of it, so 16 allows CC3+ to get it's fill. Probably best to go with DDR5 these days for the future, but if the budget constrains you, you are better off going for DDR4 ram instead of scaling back the CPU.

I also recommend having a NVMe system drive, and make sure it is big enough to install CC3+ on it. Personally, I recommend 512GB+. CC3+ do use RAM caching, so it won't be terrible on a slower drive, but getting the extra speed is good.

For the rest of the components, get what you can. You don't need a huge PSU (unless you are also getting a powerful graphics card)

Extra storage, more ram is always good.

These are smart symbols. In this case, this features is made to enable you to both align them correctly with the edge of the roof, and also allow you to place them as far in/out as you want. So therefore they take two clicks to place, after you click once to place them, you can move your mouse to adjust the position before clicking again to finish the placement.

There is a blog article available describing ways to find symbols (from your installed collections):