Coastline Maker - GUI help

[jonpatch 1]

Folks, I've found Coastline Maker a fairly quick learn; it's a great tool.But I have a couple of frustrations with the UI.1. The documentation says to right-click on a segment to select a point for editing. Sometimes this works. More often a seemingly arbirtrary point is grabbed from somewhere on the screen and dragged to that point. At other times this works. It appears the program is modal, but does not tell you what mode you are in or how to change it! Help!2. This is perhaps related to the above problem: If I want to start a new segment, I click the new segment checkbox, then click on the spot on the screen I want. More often than not, rather than starting a new segment, an existing point is moved to that location. Whassup?Also I'm baffled as to why the contradictory instructions to snap LOD13 boundary points to the edge, while at the same time saying that you need to nudge points away from the edge to prevent loss of coastline in an adjacent cell. I almost always lose that next cell coastline, and I've only allowed points near that cell that are "snapped".Another significant difficulty is debugging: in one cell I have the error (when I attempt to place a land or water poly), "Fatal error - polygon overflow. Likely cause is a VTP segment without a point in a call through which it passes" However I'm fairly confident I don't have such a segment, so I don't know how to find the culprit. In this case I completely redid the segment and still got the same error. I also looked at adjacent cells for segments that might have crept over the edge.Other questions- what's a quick way to change the coastline type when I've incorrectly entered a long segment with the wrong type?- how do I add a point in the middle of an existing segment to refine the coast better?- how do I continue to add to an existing segment after I've made some other segments?- is there a more recent version or better tool now available? I get too-frequent CTDs.Jon

[jonpatch 1]

A couple of more questions:- if I screenshot and adjust 4 LOD13 cells at a time, I find the resolution very coarse to make fine adjustments. Is it better to do just one LOD13 cell at a time?- and in general, is there a better way to do fine adjustments?- I'm finding mall gaps at LOD boundaries, is this due to inaccuracy in my image cropping when I chose my edit area?Jon

[Guest irmurray]

Hi there, I am the author of CLM, so I hope I can answer your questions ... though it's a few months since I did any programming on it! Most of the problems raised are little inconsistencies with the GUI which I never quite ironed out!1. There is no modality on the right clicking. The right-click should be on the POINT you wish to edit (rather than the line segment), and it should pick up the nearest point to the right-click and you can then drag it with the mouse. 2. This is related to the length of the click you make. A short click will create a new point, a longer click take the existing point. This is less than ideal, I admit!Contradictory re LOD 13 edges: Usually, you DO want to snap to the edges of LOD 13 cells, particularly within a CLM project area. However, sometimes a VTP point within the CLM area appears (in FS) to overlap into a neighbouring VTP cell and cause the VTP in that cell to disappear. You then need to nudge your VTP point away from the edge to stop this happening. This is entirely area specific, and there is no quick fix for it other than trial and error with CLM and FS.Polygon overflow: this occurs if a VTP segment crosses a cell but there is no point on that segment within the cell. Redoing the segment might repeat the error! Check especially at cell corners, as you may think a segment is skirting the edge of a cell (visually) but mathematically it actually crosses the corner.Changing VTP type: oops, there is no quick way to change it ... I'll add that in to the next version!Adding new point: just select a point adjacent to where you want to add, ensure "start new segment" is UNchecked, and right click to create the new point.New point at end: same again, starting at the last point in the segment. You may need to "reverse segment" to make this easier".Version: latest version of CLM is 2.0.2. Other tools exist, such as Ground2K, which are newer and may do more (G2K does VTP2 which post-dates CLM).Now on to the next set of questions ...Cheers,Iain.

[Guest irmurray]

No, don't do one LOD13 at a time - you'll end up with loads of files and spend hours getting the joins right. Do one CLM project for the whole area. I've not done an area as large as one LOD8 cell in one go (that's maybe too much!!), but have done an area of about 20x10 LOD8s OK. For fine adjustment, use the "edit point" button and change the co-ordinates manually; there is as much fine control this way as you need.Gaps at boundaries: no, it's more likely due to FS. If your VTP point is on the cell boundary, it should be on the cell boundary in FS too ... however, sometimes FS "sees" it in the next cell. Sadly, it's down to trial and error within the area you are editing!I hope all of this helps.Feel free to e-mail me any questions at:irmurray@computing.dundee.ac.ukCheers,Iain.

[jonpatch 1]

Hi Iain, thanks for the detalied response. I'll email you directly, but I did not find the time-length of the mouse click to make much difference, it still seems arbitrary what function I get. I am running 2.2.1 from August 2003. I am using the VTP point list to choose my editing points; it's the only way I've found that is reliable, but is no good when I want to start a new segment.I can solve the gap problem between LOD13 cell boundaries when I am editing both sides cells, I simply overlap the boundaries by several points. At the edge of my editing area I am stuck.I'm stymied by the "Polygon overflow" error. I do not have cells through which a VTP segment passes without a point. So there is no clue as what is causing the error. If I redraw the line it may just disappear. One time it vanished by simply starting the program again.Happy New Year!Jon

[jonpatch 1]

Folks, despite several emails I have not heard back from Iain for over a month, which brings two thoughts:1. I hope Iain is well and all is ok with him. In his initial private response at the end of December he was responsive and helpful.2. I'm going to switch to SBuilder to get this done.Jon

[jonpatch 1]

... and SBuilder worked fine, had everything I needed and more in a few hours with some great help on the Scenerydesign forum.Jon