Icons & Commands

(in order as they appear in the text)

Icon

Image 1.

     OK, looks fairly daunting, huh? Try not to let it fool you, it's really quite basic. Let's start.

     First, you have two display options. On Image 1, see the two check boxes at the upper left? They're your two display options. They tell CC2 how you want to see your symbol catalog. By leaving "Display Symbols" checked, you tell CC2 that you want to see a thumbnail of the symbol. If you uncheck it, you would only see the symbols name. Now, why would this be useful? We'll get to that when we discuss the Edit button. The second check box is "Show Fill Style Symbols." This is used for the rare occasion that you find yourself wanting to manipulate Fill Style Symbols.

     Going in a clockwise fashion, the next item is the "Save as catalog" button. This opens a Save as... dialog to save the current drawing as a symbol catalog. Very handy if you just custom defined a few symbols in your new map, and want to save it as a symbol catalog. Another way to do this, is by using File-->Save As... to bring up the Save As... dialog.

     Continuing, we come to "New." Clicking this button will open up a second dialog. This one requests a name for your new symbol, and informs you that hitting OK will open up a new drawing window to edit the new symbol. This is a button I've rarely used, as I normally define my symbols in the original file, as I described in my Symbol Creation tutorial.

     Now, you must click on one of the symbols in the list box. Until you do so, the "Rename" button will remain disabled. When clicked, this button will show you a dialog box telling you the symbols old name, and giving you a text box to enter the symbols new name. There is a character limit for your symbols name, but the text box automatically prevents you from using a symbol name that is to long. After renaming your symbol, you are returned to the SYMMGR dialog.

     Maybe you wanted to make some changes to your symbol. While you could place the symbol in your drawing, explode it, make changes, and then redefine it, why not just press the "Edit" button? Then, you open a window and edit the symbol directly. When you are done making changes, and close the window, CC2 will prompt you that changes to the symbol can not be undone. To keep your changes, click "Yes." If you really don't like how things turned out, click "No." Your changes have been made. Please note, while in this editing window, some features are limited, like Save & Save As..., but I won't go into details on those limitations here.

     After "Edit", is "Clone." This button lets you copy the selected symbol, with a dialog box opening up for you to give it a new name. This feature is very handy if you want to use the same entities, just with minor changes. Saves quite a bit of time!

     Next, the ever popular "Delete." This perennial favorite lets you delete the selected symbols. This CAN NOT BE UNDONE. So be careful. If you're like me, you love to keep backups.

     The next button is "Scale." This button is very powerful, because you can scale selected symbol definitions. This means you scale the entities IN the definitions, as opposed to scaling the symbols when you place them on the map. This change affects symbols already in the map, and any you may place in the future, so only use it if you feel your symbols are really out of scale for that map.

     "List" is an odd command, and most users will have no use for it. Clicking on this button opens up a blue window, listing the entities inside of each symbol definition. If you don't know what you're looking at, this will be very confusing. If you were looking for a way to list all the symbols in a catalog, try SYMOUT. SYMOUT will open a dialog box that lets you save all the symbols in a FCW file, so you can print it out, file it, or otherwise use a list of symbols. I find it handy for quick and accurate counts of the symbols I create for the Mysaniti Cartographer's Guild. If I recall correctly, this command was introduced in the Character Artist add-on. This add-on has many interesting tools, in addition to the great portrait & counter creation tools it was meant for!

     Well, that's all for now. Hope this tutorial is helping you understand manipulating symbol catalogs in CC2 Pro!