Features Editor

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Editing and Projecting Features

This topic describes various ways of changing surface features and data features. The functionality is accessed through the Terrain/Features menu item.

Additional information on customizing and editing features found in other sections:

•A description of common feature properties and type-specific feature properties is found in the description of the Customize Features/Polygons dialog window. These properties may be customized to be feature-specific.

•Ways to:

1.Graphically create features and polygons,

2.Edit individual feature points,

3.Move features, and

4.Access Context-sensitive popup menus for features

are described in the Editing Objects help topic.

The Terrain/Features menu items are described below.

Draw Features

Draw Polygons

These two options graphically create features and polygons. They are described in the Editing Objects help topic.

Customize

This option allows selected features/polygons to be customized through the Customize Features/Polygons dialog window. In this way their common feature properties and type-specific feature properties may be changed to be feature-specific.

Move

Offset

These two options allow users to:

•Copy a selected feature/polygon and offset the copy by a given distance in a given direction. If more than one feature is selected, all selected features will be copied and moved, or

•Move a selected feature/polygon by a given distance in a given direction. If more than one feature is selected, all selected features will be moved.

The parameters controlling these operations are described in help for the Copy/Offset and Move dialog windows.

Break

This option allows users to break a selected feature into two parts. Instead of the original feature two new features appear. These new features are continuous with the original feature. The shorter of the two new features remains selected so the user may operate on it or quickly customize its Common and Individual Properties. The longer feature’s properties remain as for original feature.

This option is not available for polygons.

Join

This option allows users to join two features by connecting their edge points. If these features have different properties such as Type, Color, Thickness etc the newly created feature takes the properties from the first selected feature. After terminating this action the resulting joined feature remains selected. This allows its properties to be easily customized.

Copy

This option is available only for data features i.e. in a Data Window. It allows users to create a copy of a selected data feature or any sub-section of this feature. The copy is moved (offset) by a user-defined distance vertically or horizontally from the original feature. A user-defined horizontal angle and nominated side from the original feature control the direction of movement.

To avoid ambiguity in setting up a copy direction this functionality temporary turns on Plan View mode.

Drape

This option allows users to create a new data feature by projecting a selected data feature (or its section) vertically onto a selected surface. The parts of the original feature that are higher than the surface are projected down and vice versa.

This option is available only in Data windows. The surface onto which the feature is draped is not visible in this window.

Note that the newly created feature will be added to the data features of the current surface i.e. it will not be added to the selected draped-on surface’s data features. This new feature may contain additional vertices so that it better fits the draped surface.

The original and new data features will coincide in plan view. If desired, the original data feature may be automatically deleted after draping.

Project

This option allows users to create a new data feature by projecting a selected data feature (or its section) onto a surface at given angle. The result of this action may consist of several data features when some parts of the original feature cannot be projected onto selected surface. It may also not create any new features at all. This will happen if no part of the original feature can be projected onto the selected surface.

To avoid ambiguity in setting the direction of feature projection this functionality temporary turns on Plan View mode.

This option is available only in Data windows. The surface onto which the feature is projected is not visible in this window.

Note that the newly created feature(s) will be added to the data features of the current surface i.e. will not be added to the selected projected surface’s data features. If desired, the original data feature may be automatically deleted after projecting.