This is one reader's review of a fantasy/science fiction CAD drafting program used to make overland, top-down maps. This Windows program has excellent graphics that can be used to easily drop in details for maps of cities, forests, and even boats. It also comes at a very affordable price.
City Designer 3 is a powerful add-on for Campaign Cartographer 3, a computer assisted drawing program for fantasy and science fiction maps. It can be used to create detailed outdoor maps from a top-down perspective. This can be immensely useful for making city layouts or even floor plans for a single building or fantasy dwelling. City Designer 3 adds powerful tools to an already powerful program.
System Requirements:
- A licensed working copy of CC3
- 1.5 GB free hard drive space
- DVD drive (for boxed version) or internet connection (for download)
CD3 comes with an extremely useful Essentials Guide and an in-program tutorial. Additionally, registering the copy with allow users to receive 90 days of web-based technical support as well as free updates from ProFantasy Software. These updates often include new features as well as lots of new art.
In addition, if City Designer 3 is run in conjunction with Dungeon Designer 3, this program is capable of creating floorplans for specific houses in a city map.
City Designer 3 meshes seamlessly with Campaign Cartographer 3 and any of the other add-ons. This part of the program can be easily accessed with a click of the CD3 icon found prominently displayed on the tooltip bar. This brings up a series of tools specific to CD3 that aid in making outdoor maps and city maps simple, fast, and efficient.
The main tools associated with City Designer are the road tool and the house tool. With the use of just these two elements of CD3, a cartographer can create an entire city. The road tool allows the user to lay down a varied selection of roads. The roads come with various textures such as dirt, flagstone, or even cement. These roads can be made wide, narrow, curved, or straight with a few simple clicks of the mouse key.
Once the road is created, houses can be placed along the road using either the House button or the Random Street button. Once you pick which style of housing you would prefer in your city, CD3 will automatically cycle between various floor plans in order to create a versatile look and feel to your map. You may also take the roofs off of your houses with the Floorplan button, and in doing this, the houses can easily be populated with the various graphical elements that come with CD3 including potted plants, kitchen implements, tables, and beds.
