Hi Baphomeat,

The first thing I normally recommend is the user manual. It should be accessible as a pdf file from the help menu of CC3+, and it is more up to date than the build in help system.

If you own it, the Tome of Ultimate Mapping is also a good resource. This was the book that finally made CC2 click for me back in the day, and the latest version is updated to cover CC3+. Now, I don't recommend going out buying this if you don't already own it, you shouldn't spend money on a product you're frustrated with, but if you already own it (I don't know if your friend just gave you the core program, or a bundle?) it is worth taking a look as it is full of tutorials for the core program and add-ons.

We have the written tutorials page, but the tutorials linked from here are not intended as getting started, more like a tutorial for a specific task. You will find the link to my command of the week article series there though, which are short explanations of many individual CC3+ commands and features, including the trace feature you mentioned, which can help you make sense of a command that doesn't work like you thought it would.

jsamuelson already linked you to the video tutorials page. Depending on how you like your tutorials, you may (or may not) find the live stream recordings found there useful. They're not actually tutorials (mostly), but they so show a skilled cartographer create a map and explain what he is doing. Those with me tends to touch on more complex topics, but there are many videos there showing off the basics and explaining.

If you have Symbol Set 3: Modern, the vector style there contains several vehicles drawn using CC3+. And you can explode the symbols to get a good look at how they are constructed.

As a non-artist, drawing vectors in CC3+ would be my way to go, as I am hopeless with those image editors, and prefer the precision I get with snapping and coordinate/angle inputs.

It is a bit easier than those old instructions. You don't have to edit the XML file anymore, and you can dump the 64-bit binaries into the ImageMagick64 folder (You must create this) instead of replacing the 32-bit one in the ImageMagick folder. Make sure you get a version of ImageMagick that contains the convert.exe executable though, this is going away in newer versions, but CC3+ expects this file and it's command line arguments.

The most important (and easiest) thing of the two is Sue's trick though, as this allows CC3+ to export much larger chunks of the map at a time, both making rendering faster, and reducing the amount of potential effect artifacts that happens due to splitting up the export in sections.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to first draw the hex grid, then move the origin to the center of one of your hexes after drawing the grid. The snap grid from the hexes will allow you to place the origin perfectly in the center of a hex.

After doing this, the snap grid will be off, but just right click the grid button, and edit the "User Hexgrid" and set the grid offset to 0,0.

Note that when doing this, the origin will only be in the absolute center of the map if your map size was set up to be a proper even multiple of hexes height and odd multiple of hexes wide, otherwise, it will be pretty close to the center, but in any case, it will be in the correct center of a hex.

The issue lies in the way Windows determines the space used. Because all the add-ons are installed to the same directory, it basically ends up counting most of it for each add-on as it can't separate what belongs to each.

It is similar to your steam installation in the same image taking up 116 Gigs. Obviously, steam doesn't take that much, but Windows things the installed games are part of the installation.

You're not going to reclaim all that much by uninstalling the CC3+ add-ons. If you uninstall everything, you'll get back that ~40GB once, but not for each add-on.