The map border is just an entity like everything else. You can more or less do what you want.

When talking about the map border though, it is important to remember that there are two of them, the "technical" map border which consists of 4 lines on the MAP BORDER layer, and defines the actual size of the map and the stopping point for things like drawing tools. Then you have the visual/graphical map border, which is just decoration.

For decorative map borders, you can create as many as you want, and shape them as you want. But the drawing can only have 1 technical map border (the 4 lines around the outside of the map), and that one needs to be rectangular, no weird shapes. Now, you don't technically need a technical map border at all, but without one, you're drawing tools don't have a border to snap to, and you can't use the resize drawing area command. Also, exporting and printing to map border won't work, you will always have to define areas yourself, but technically, these are just conveniences, not requirements.

Personally, I've just used them as visual aids and planning aids (but then again, that's what I use most of the maps for). Isometric isn't the best for battle maps, but at least in my world, battle maps are in the minority anyway, illustrations and planning tools are much more important, and for that, isometric gives a very nice easy to understand view of the place.

One I used recently was an outside view of a ruin

Disappearing parts during overlap happens because the same line overlaps itself. There are several ways to avoid or fix this:

• Don't start drawing at a corner. If the start/end is in the middle of a length of wall you don't need any overlaps
• Build the walls using more than one path. If they are not the same entity, you don't get the disappearing problem.
• Use tools like Combine Path or Path to Poly to combine the lines to make the corners actual corners and not just "meeting points of the ends"

FT3+ can't use the CC3+ maps/templates directly. The way the FT3 exports creates the correct fill for the landmass is by relying on a texture overblend effect on the landmass (and whatever else), it doesn't set the entities up with fills like when you normally draw the map. So when you add a new template to it, you also need to go in and add that texture overblend effect to the appropriate sheet (and point it to the appropriate bitmap fill file). Look at the LAND sheet in the existing templates there.

You can use the SYMDELNEAR command to do this.

You need to draw the selection box first so it selects everything, and then you can do the Combine -> Not -> Fill style -> Solid part.

Thinking about it though, it may be easier to: Change Properties -> Right click to bring up selection menu -> Fill Style -> right click to bring up fill dialog-> Pick the CA101 parchment form bitmap files. There is nothing else in the map that is supposed to use that fill style, so just selecting everything with the wrong parchment works just as well as selecting the forest and then removing the solid lines from the selection.

The weird lines typically happens when you have nodes very close to each other making sharp turns (They're miter joins gone extreme). In many cases, this can be fixed by running the SIMPLIFY command on the polygon. This command automatically deletes nodes that are too close to each other based on the distance you give.

The DELNODEW command will appear in the future.

Here's roflo1's entry, the South Gate, now added to the atlas.

This concludes the contest entries, as I've added the ones I've gotten .fcw files for. Next entry will be one of those others in queue.

I've also updated the contest page on the atlas site to include this one.

I see. In that case, Wyverns tips should help. Vector isn't a universal format that can just be shared between programs, so they should be exported from Illustrator as .png (raster) files and imported as raster symbols.

Dragon's lair now added to the atlas.