Mumblings from a Hammer beginner
... sure I can learn Hammer, That PeTi map I created just needs fluffing up and we are away... that is how it started about three weeks ago...
And now I am finding myself in a fight to the death with Hammer, every evening I take a few hours to torture myself and each day I sink deeper into this swamp of information. The tutorials on YouTube are really helpful - hey guys I am going to show you how to make an entry door, oh, don't worry about the textures not fitting, we'll just focus on the door.
Three days later I found out that the textures DO matter, and also that there is a bit more to it than just have two open and close "fields" - sound aint working but someone on the forum told me kindly that i might be using the wrong door instance, I left it for now, time to crack on with the puzzle. I have breakable glass - great, it is nodraw as instructed by an other YouTube video, and glass on the other side, not nice looking glass btw like that guy had- I only seem to find this nasty stained dirty glass, but I suppose that is all I deserve at this moment. Problem still is do that if you stand in the wrong place you see this lovely yellow nodraw texture - but leave that for now, I will fix that later... Next is my first room, I created it in a 32x32 grid, I made it hollow using 32 thickness, and I swear, you must trust me, nothing frigging fits! I am bashing away at these textures but they refuse to listen! I tried sweet talking, cursing swearing, begging, but it just won't do... no worry, I will fix it later, time for the emancipation grid, found a lovely wiki about that, followed it to the letter... and now I am looking at this ugly blocky grid, and the emitters are simply not there after the compile.... but well... I will leave it for later I think.....
Just the normal ramblings I suppose, but I aint giving up... one of these months my first map will be ready... and then I can spend the following two months fixing all the bits on my todo list:
-broken Turret is not talking like one
-fog is not foggy
-Laser emitter refuses to fit nicely in the wall
-Discouragement Field - don't even friggin go there, just don't ok!
-textures between walls and ceilings never fit
etc etc
Ooh, you know what, I feel a lot better after typing all that, anyway, back to my map and get that cube dropper installed, I wonder if I need to cut out the ceiling.... shouldn't be that hard... I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
That's nice dear
"I hear voices. But I ignore them and I just carry on killing."
I know how you feel about door frames, aligning the textures is a serious pain in the ass. As for broken turrets, all you're doing is telling Hammer what turret model to load. You need to tell it to suppress the normal turret speech and instead play the broken turret speech. If you're not sure how it's done the best advice I can give you is to use bspsource to decompile one of Valve's maps and see how they do it, that's how I learnt to use some parts of hammer. I'd recommend lowering the size of your grid as well, 32x32 is far too large for most of the game's elements.
Hammer's a lot more elegant than the PETI editor and you can do far more with it, but yes the learning curve is steep.
For the turrets, they should be Used As Actor, with a few logic_choreographed_scenes for their lines.
Your glass seems to be a func_breakable_surf, use func_breakable instead with whatever glass texture you want on ALL faces (no nodraw necessary).
To align textures, click the pretty-colored cube on the left and you can stretch and shift them, or click "Align Left", "Align Top", or "Fit".
Your fizzler models disappeared? If they're prop_dynamic you need the model to be fizzler_dynamic.mdl, if they're prop_static it has to be fizzler.mdl. It's an old holdover in Source from the HL2 days. You could also just use the fizzler instances from /instances/gameplay.
Doors are a huge pain, I've never gotten one to work, sorry. Maybe try using the PTI door instances? They seem to work well if you want worldportal doors.
The easiest way to make a discouragement field is to use the instance from the VDC. If you haven't been there, it's the best way to learn Hammer. While Portal 2 was downloading for me I read everything in the Portal 2 category and all the pages from the List of Portal 2 Entities, that's how I know hammer. Mostly theory, I haven't made many maps myself.
Good luck! And I'm glad you're trying to use Hammer instead of just hacking apart the PTI instances and pretending you know how to use it, it results in MUCH better maps.
The_Butler, that was so sweet... and in many moments (excuse me please) I just couldn't help smiling... also in a couple of times I had to laugh a lot 
... But all that fun reading this letter, I swear it was becasue I saw myself so damn reflected into it 
I bet almost all of us did!
What I mean is, dude, all that you're describing is absolutely normal, mate. I want to cheer you up and tell you this: the most important thing you seem to have inside yourself is that courage to continue on, to face the problems and never give up. I assure you that one day, only one of all that bunch of problems will suddenly disappear, a couple of adjacent textures will match, or your fizzler props will be seen after a compile, and right then, right in that moment, you'll feel something awesome! Promised. And after that, there'll be another of those moments, and another... and like you said, your first map will be released and it might not be perfect, but there it is... it'll be a first one, but better ones will come. For sure 
I assume you have already watched like a thousand tutorials, but there are many good tutorials and also bad ones, maybe you hadn't good luck. I offer myself to help you everytime I can. Just add me on steam. My name there is the same as here, josepezdj.
Anyway, visit Solarchronus channel, I use to recommend him because I started with his tutorials and because I really liked his educational way of explaining things and his neat mapping.
Also, check LpFreaky's clean mapping guide, it'll help as well.
Cheer up!
useful tools and stuff here on TWP 
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
The thing to remember about Hammer is that it's like a donkey. Treat it incorrectly and it gets upset, kicks you in the face, etc, etc. Treat it well though and it's incredibly useful. Hammer has so steep a learning curve that it's more like a wall, but once you get past the initial part, it becomes smooth sailing. Just remember - if a moron like me figured out Hammer so can you.
Keep it up
[spoiler]WOM Test 1
Laser Cube Quest
Mho' Power - Community Spotlight!
Four Corners[/spoiler]
Well thanks everyone for the kind support, I did not get my cube dropper to work, instead I investigated why my map went dark after I added a death field https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Discouragement_Field to my map. Turns out I was running with fullbright light that was auto-generated, the death field had a light entity, anyway, I am now placing lovely little lights everywhere to see if that will solve matters.
never give give up, never render!
Cube droppers are a real pain, especially with all the different types, several of which are obsolete or not fully working. I tried to make my customizable box droppers (http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=2077) easier to use, you still have to cut a hole in the ceiling, but it's easier to specify the cube type and make it drop (no naming relays and all, just a proxy).
There are instances for cube droppers. Hell, there are instances for *everything*.
If you're a beginner mapper, I recommend using those first, and once you think you're confident enough to do *everything* from scratch, then hold on tight, take a deep breath, and do everything from scratch.
Just don't blame me when Hammer crashes and you forgot to save everything.
Uh... no? Unless you are doing it completely wrong...
[Released] Power Interference
[Released] Rust and Dust (Spotlight Map!)
[Released] Multiportal