Mumblings from a Hammer beginner
How many ways are there? Put the frame instance in, then create the brush around it, seems simple enough to me. Still managed to end up misaligned though.
There are tons of simple ways to do it. Here's how I do it.
Turn texture lock on. Copy and paste the door and frame from the example map zoo_mechanics. Align where ever you want it... make sure to turn texture lock off when you're done. Change textures to your liking.
Sometimes, you don't even have to turn texture lock on, if you are working on a large grid size.
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I'm pretty sure I had the texture lock on in the first map I made (I typically tend to make my grid as small as it goes)
So far I have just used the pre-created door frame instances and removed the unnecessary nodraw brushes.
I tend to just work on a 64?64 grid and use a 32?32 tile texture until I'm done. (Who needs dev textures?) Then I just lower it for whatever I would lower it for, and raise it back to 64?64 or 32?32. Probably not he best method, but it works for me.
My rule of thumb is: For clean themed maps, snap to 64 while making your outer walls. Use 4 for glass and button stands and 8 for everything else. For maps you intend to convert to other themes use 8.
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OK, about textures aligning, there is something very handy each newbie mapper should have into account, and that's the textures size and periodicity of the tiles' lines we see in their drawings. Let me explain: into the face edit sheet there's a "texture shift" part where you can scroll the texture along the X axis and the Y axis, right? well, have this number in your head: 128.
128 are the units of the distance between the lines in the tiles of the textures like for instance "black_floor_metal_001a.vtf"... So it's very easy to align the textures if in there you only put the following numbers: 0, 128, 256, 384, 512, 640, 768, 896 and 1024.
Textures like for instance black_wall_metal_002c.vtf, due to the fact that the tiles are double size than in previous example, distance between lines is 256.
This way you will all have your textures forcedly aligned! Ofc, there are more things to consider here, but that rule should do by now 
useful tools and stuff here on TWP 
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One of the benefits of being a computer science major is that those numbers just come off the top of my head.
Yay verily.
