DCS World Mission Editor | Draw Tool

[dark_wood]

1 minute ago, buur said:

Thanks for the link, but I mean the military symbols as icons.

Well, yes that will be something

This mod have some of them: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3319072/

[Pappy2]

Hi there,
in the mission editor, on the map I can fill in the objectives, create zones, border lines etc.
how to make all this visible in flight when I press "F10"  ?

For example here:
https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3327742/

In flight in my A4 when I do "F10" all the annotations are visible

I tried to create missions with lots of annotations, but when I do "F10" nothing is visible.

Anyone know the trick to achieve this  ?

Thanks in advance

Edited December 3, 2022 by Pappy2

[Pappy2]

OK searching and trying I found

On 10/21/2021 at 2:13 AM, NineLine said:

Check the layer its on, it maybe all on Author by default? Move what you want on specific coalitions to that coalitions layer or common for all. 

 

More details:

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by Pappy2

[TJTAS]

Is this feature only half complete?. It seem incongruous that you can have shapes / drawings turned off but I can see no way to turn them on when you want them via triggers. There is a User Draw Show in the trigger effects but it doesn't seem to do anything. I can't see any updates to the scripting reference to do it there either?.

[Callsign112]

On 11/22/2021 at 12:20 PM, NineLine said:

I have submitted a few new lines, and improvements to the current ones, as well as 100 plus new icons. So I hope we see those soon. 

Thanks.

At the moment, we don't have an icon for infantry. Would it be possible to add this?

[OzDeaDMeaT]

would love all the functionality that is in the ME draw tool to be available via the API, it looks like two different organisations came up with separate solutions to fix the same problem. The Idea of Layers that we could turn on and off would be bloody amazing.

[Mav87th]

or ability to add overlays to the map and resize them afterwards....

[Volator]

On 12/13/2021 at 5:01 AM, Baaz said:

Could someone tell me what I'm doing wrong, please.

Situation:

I will put a text box at an airfield with notations like those shown in Suntsag's video above (all credit goes to him for the idea).  However, while the box is rather small while zoomed in, the box becomes incredibly large the further I zoom out; to the point where multiple boxes start overlapping each other and become unreadable and ugly to look at.

Am I missing a checkbox somewhere, or am I glitched somehow?

This is definitely something that ED should improve. It's quite annoying.

[Volator]

I find it difficult to draw polygones with just a limited number of points. If I click to put down the first two points of a polygone, the polygone often  automatically "closes" as finished, and if I keep the mouse button pressed and draw a line, I get too many points that I don't need. Is there a correct technique that I'm missing to get just the right amount of points for a polygone?

Edited April 20 by Volator

[waterman]

Hi

 Select Draw Tool

 Click on Polygon

 Click on Free

 Single left click and slide mouse (one line)

 Single left click and slide mouse (2 lines)

 double left click mouse to finish a triangle shape.

 have fun !

[Volator]

3 hours ago, waterman said:

double left click mouse to finish a triangle shape.

Thanks, but what if I wanted to create an octagon shape or similar? Triangles were no problem, but with the third point placed that's where the drawing tool always considers my polygon finished and I can not add any more points.

Edited April 19 by Volator

[waterman]

It works ok on mine see picture maybe theres a mod or something in your DCS it conflicts with or maybe the mouse polling rate is too sensitive (high) or something like that.

[rob10]

11 hours ago, Volator said:

Thanks, but what if I wanted to create an octagon shape or similar? Triangles were no problem, but with the third point placed that's where the drawing tool always considers my polygon finished and I can not add any more points.

Something that could cause that is if you're dropping the points too close together.  Zoom out a bit and it should be farther apart and that may solve your problem.  Mods are always a good culprit to check too since they can cause weird and unexpected issues at times.

[Volator]

13 hours ago, rob10 said:

Mods are always a good culprit to check too since they can cause weird and unexpected issues at times

Ah, that must have been it. I had the 476th FW Range Targets mods installed, but now, on a fresh map without them, there's no problem at all to create polygons to my liking. Thanks for the hint.

***Edit***

Damn, no, that wasn't it. I managed to draw one hexagon without any problems, then assigned all the airfields on the CWG map to red and blue, and now I'm back to the orgininal problem...

***Edit2***

My suspicion is that there is some connection with either renaming polygons or assigning layers to them or creating textboxes, because those are the things I did when this problem showed up again. I'll investigate a little more.

Edited April 20 by Volator

[gulredrel]

On 4/20/2025 at 10:16 AM, Volator said:

My suspicion is that there is some connection with either renaming polygons or assigning layers to them or creating textboxes, because those are the things I did when this problem showed up again. I'll investigate a little more.

I've a similar problem drawing free polygons.

It sometimes creates just triangles as you describe above. Sometimes it stops after the second point and so it's just a line.

In some instances I think it's a jittery mouse position when clicking, so sometimes keeping the mouse more steady helps to set the corner points. Changing to select option and back to drawing option free polygon helps. Definitely a weird non really reproducible behavior.

 

As this thread is quite old. Is there an option in the meantime to export draw items from one mission and import them into another?!

[cfrag]

On 6/2/2025 at 9:21 PM, gulredrel said:

Is there an option in the meantime to export draw items from one mission and import them into another?!

There is, sort of, and it is lowest drawer UI quality-wise (unfortunately like so many of ED's recent features).

In order to import drawings from one miz to the other, you can use the the 'band select tool' a.k.a multi-select (I warn again that this is quality-wise not a good experience): Here's how

• Select the drawings with the band selection tool (note that unlike any other band selection tool in other apps, you first have to activate the band selection mode)
• MAKE SURE THAT YOU ALSO INCLUDE AT LEAST ONE UNIT INTO THE SELECTION. Why? Because band selection is buggy. If you select only line drawings, nothing will be pasted. I assume that the silly anchor is required for pasting, and there is no anchor when you copy/paste line drawings only. 
• Once you have selected the drawings (plus a unit), press ctrl-c to copy
• immediately open the target mission. Be advise that that mission has to have been saved before, so do not create a new unsaved mission. Open a saved one instead.
• Activate the Band-Select mode. Why? Because the kind folk at ED seem to have no idea of proper UI design. If you paste without activating band selection first, nothing is pasted. Silly? Stupid? Yes.
• Move the mouse to where you want to place the objects
• Press ctrl-v to paste the drawings and unit. 
• Engage the MOVE mode inside the Multi-Select mode (yeah, a mode within a mode, another UX sin).
• Move the pasted line art to where you need them to be
• disengage move and multiselect modes 
• Remove the unit(s). Note that if the unit was an aircraft with "start from ramp", you'll have to look for it at the nearest airfield close to the location where it would have appeared during paste. Yeah, I know...

Indeed, this is bottom "quality", and there is little excuse to leave it in this abysmal state for half a year. Then again, this is DCS...

Edited 12 hours ago by cfrag