PlanetGIS User Guide/Design Mode

From PlanetWiki

Contents 1 Design Mode 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Views 1.2.1 Displays 1.3 Feature classes 1.3.1 Detail tables 1.3.2 Thematic queries 1.4 Tables 1.5 Styles 1.5.1 Shapes 1.5.2 Hatches 1.5.3 Operations on styles 1.6 Saved locations 1.7 Print frames 1.8 Floating objects 1.9 Call-outs 1.10 Reports

Design Mode

Introduction

“Design mode” is an alternate way of looking at a PlanetGIS project, focusing on the structure instead of the map. It is a Windows Explorer-like, drag-and-drop interface to the entire data structure of a PlanetGIS project. Design mode is particularly useful for copying feature classes, displays and styles between different projects. Many tasks that can be done elsewhere can also be done in design mode and many others can only be done here.

To activate design mode, click on the Design button on the menu toolbar. The Map button will take you back to the map.

The design window contains a tree view on the left and a list view on the right. Each node of the tree view represents an object or collection of objects in a PlanetGIS project. The list view lists items of a collection selected on the tree view for convenience of copying them to a different node on the tree view.

Click on the next to a node to expand that node to show its contents.

In most cases, nodes may be dragged to other collections or within the same collection to change the order. Items in the list view may also be dragged to nodes of the tree view.

As with the display manager, it is important exactly where you drop an item in a drag-and-drop operation. Dropping directly onto the name of a node suggests that you want to place your selected items inside that node, if that node can contain other nodes. If you are only changing the order of nodes, be sure to drop items slightly to the right of the name of the target. When dragging a node over another node that cannot accept the node inside or under it, the cursor will change to a to indicate this.

Right-clicking on any node will show a menu that is specific to the type of object represented by that node. Some nodes are collections that contain “child” objects, some represent objects without “children” and some do both. Where nodes are representing collections, there will always be a menu item similar to “new” or “add” which will create a contained object of the appropriate type. Where nodes are more than just a collection, there will always be a properties menu item which will launch a dialogue box where all aspects and options of the selected object may be controlled. Most nodes like these will also have a duplicate item in the popup menu to create an exact copy.

Views

The views section lists the views of a selected project. Changing the views here will change the tabs displayed at the top of the map.

This world map has only the default view which has been named to describe the source of the data. Inside a view you will find the displays of that view. The displays are the “levels” of the map that you can see in the display tab when in mapping mode. Editing the displays here is similar to editing them in the display manager.

You can create a new view here, similar to right-clicking on a view tab above the map, by right-clicking on the views node and selecting new.

As an example we will create a new view named “Population of major cities” to show a map of all the major cities coloured and sized relative to their populations. As soon as we've entered a name and pressed enter, the new view's properties dialogue appears. At this point we simply press OK to close it.

In most cases the next step would be to copy some displays from another view:

1. Click on the view from which you want to copy displays.
2. Select the displays you wish to copy on the right hand side. (Hold the Ctrl key down and click or drag the mouse to select more than one display).
3. Click on a selected display and hold the left mouse button while dragging the displays to the view you've just created, making sure the mouse cursor is over the name of the new view.
4. Drop the displays (release mouse button).

Now you are ready to add a feature class required to illustrate the theme of the view (major city population). However, in this example, you will be dragging a thematic query from within the feature class it is based on. (More about this later). See illustration on the left. You have to locate the “Population” thematic by expanding the Feature classes node, then Cities and then Thematic queries. Once located you simply drag the node and drop it on the new view node. This has the effect of creating a new group of displays matching the name of the thematic query and its sub-layers at the bottom of the display list. In this example you dragged a node from the tree view to somewhere else in the tree view. When dragging-and-dropping single nodes this is usually the easiest.

Now click on the map button () at the centre-top and the population tab to view the results.

You may also want to create a hierarchy of views. By right-clicking on a view node and selecting New‑>View, you will create a “child” view inside it. Child views (by default) also display the contents of their “parent” views.

Displays

Although it is more common to work with displays in the display manager, it is useful to do repetitive tasks in design mode, for example setting up a number of similar views. The preceding example illustrates this. A view node's popup menu also have New->Display for creating a display manually and New->Group to create a group of displays.

Feature classes

This node represents the spatial database of a PlanetGIS project. All features, queries and database link definitions are stored here.

To create a new feature class, right-click on the Feature classes node and select New‑>Feature class. You can also create groups to contain collections of feature classes. In doing so you keep your project more manageable and make it easier to add all feature classes in a group to your display list. For example, all road feature classes could be grouped in a group named “Roads”, water feature classes in a group named “Water”, etc.

With the exception of feature groups, you need to specify a type for each feature class. At this point you can also specify the default style for the feature class. If left at “Default” it will be assigned at a later point as soon as a style is assigned to a display which utilizes this feature class.

Check temporary feature class if you will not be needing this feature class once the project is saved and closed. Similarly, temporary features means this feature class must be emptied upon saving the project. Use source (optional) to record a note for yourself or the users of your map about where the data originated from.

To quickly add feature classes to a view, i.e. create displays that reference feature classes, simply drag the features into a view. Use the list view on the right to drag multiple features.

Detail tables

Each feature class has two collections of which the first is detail tables. Under detail tables you may add an unlimited number of references to attribute tables. Although these references are called “tables” in PlanetGIS, they are not really tables but references to tables. While there are tools to create new tables in PlanetGIS, creating a new “detail table” here is simply the creation of a link to a database table with the opportunity to customize the display of its contents in a myriad of ways. Please see Connecting to Information below for more information.

Thematic queries

The second collection present in each feature class is that of thematic queries. This is where you can set up a variety of visualizations of your mapping data based on information contained in the detail tables described above. Please see Thematic Mapping below.

Tables

This is a collection of tables of which the displayed contents are not directly linked to features of the map. It is a different view of the tables in your database in as much that all the records are displayed, depending on filtering.

To view the tables that are configured here, click on the info button () at the centre-top to activate the third mode of display.

When creating or modifying a database connection, you can specify whether or not to display all the tables in the database in this mode. Therefore, first you will have the tables that were specifically set up under the tables node, customized, ordered and grouped for the purposes of your application followed by one or more database connections each displaying all the tables of the database.

The properties for table references here are the same as for detail tables, described below.

Styles

Styles are used by displays and in some other instances to supply the visual appearance of objects rendered on a computer screen or any other digital reproduction. The styles node contains a collection of styles & groups of styles stored with a PlanetGIS project. This collection is preceded by a collection of shapes and a collection of hatches which may be used by the styles of the project.

Shapes

You may create your own shapes as described earlier and import them here by right-clicking on the shapes node and selecting import features. The “stock” shapes provided with PlanetGIS cannot be changed since they are not stored with the project, but you can right-click on a shape, click duplicate and then edit the coordinates manually. This is especially useful for changing the “hot spot” of a shape, the point which should be centred at the coordinate of the point which it indicates on the map.

Shape coordinates are normalized to a 10 by 10 cartesian¹ grid with point (0,0) in the middle. If a shape is not square, either its width or height will be less than 20 units in extent. This is the way Planet changes a shapes coordinates during the process of importing them from a feature class. You do not have to adhere to this and may choose any other grid system, as long as it is cartesian. When drawing a shape which should be 5mm by 5mm, Planet will look at the width and height of the actual shape and scale it such so that either the width or height will be 5mm, but not more. (The scaling is done while keeping the width-to-height ratio constant).

Editing the coordinates manually. A shape is stored as a string containing coordinates in the format “(x1,y1),(x1,y2),.....,(xn,yn)”. If the first and last coordinates are coincident, the shape will be filled if a fill colour is specified. Shapes can also have multiple parts. To add a separate part to a shape, add each part on a new line but be sure to end each line with a semi-colon.

Editing the hot spot. By default the hot spot is at 0,0 – the centre point. It is often desirable to shift the hot spot to one of the corners (or somewhere else). As an example, if one would like the lightning shape to display so that the tip of its arrow head touches the point it describes on a map, the hot spot needs to be moved to somewhere close to the bottom-left corner. Since the lighting shape is not as wide as it is high, the hot spot should be at (-7.164,-10). You can use the extents figures to guide you.

Hatches

It is a bit more complicated to create your own hatches, but you can easily import .PAT files generated by AutoCAD and others. PlanetGIS has a large number of “stock” hatches, so you'll hopefully find ones that suit your requirements. Instructions on how to create your own hatches will be documented in the Reference section. Also remember that you can use shapes in fills which is easier and usually sufficient for mapping applications, other than the standard “cross-hatches”.

Operations on styles

Apart from being able to create and customize styles just like you can do elsewhere, design mode is useful for duplicating styles, organizing them into groups and most importantly, exchanging drawing tools. To copy one or more of the “building blocks” - the drawing tools, i.e. pen, fill, font or symbol – simply click on a style, select the desired items on the right hand side and drag them onto a style on the left.

Saved locations

todo

Print frames

todo

Floating objects

todo

Call-outs

todo

Reports

todo

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Next: Connecting to Information