Cruisers' Net | Cruisers Helping Cruisers

Nov 21, 2016by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

NEW Chart View : Overview

This is the first in a series of posts detailing the capabilities of the New Chart View. This post provides an overview of the graphical layout and associated feature areas.

There are six feature areas to become familiar with. Each area is shown in the following graphic and generally described below.

1. Map Type

2. Tools

3. Display Options

4. View Control

5. Weather Overlays

6. Messages

1. Map Type

Map type choice is available in the upper left corner with the three similar options as the past: Charts, Hybrid and Map. Charts are now obtained from the official NOAA site versus through EarthNC in the past. Hybrid is a combination of aerial with street overlays and obtained from Google. Map is a traditional street map view and also obtained from Google.

2. Tools

The tool area is in the top center and provides general functionality including:

Help
Local information
Measuring
Routing
‘Go To Home’ – center at your current location, and
Latitude and longitude of the current mouse position when the window is active.

Measuring allows you to measure on the map between two locations. You can drag the end points around and instantaneous distance and optionally the latitude and longitude of the points.

Routing enables you to define a route on screen and download it or to upload a previously defined route from a file in gpx format. When defining the route the distance and bearing between each set of points is shown, the total distance to each point and, optionally, with latitude and longitude of each point.

Local information is comprehensive information based on the map center if you click the icon or anywhere you right click the mouse . This comprehensive information includes the local regular weather forecast (daily, next few hours, weekly), marine weather forecast, sun/moon times and characteristics, nearest tide station (predicted, actual, difference) and nearest weather buoy.

3. Display Options

There are many options that can be toggled on / off from this area. Many are the same as the original chart view (marinas , bridges , anchorages , etc) but several are new and innovative. Two of which are:

The Waterways option displays the various waterways (infamous Magenta line, etc.) and also contains dots at every 5 miles via the icon. When hovering over a dot a popup shows the mile marker so you always have a quick reference to your mile marker location.

A second and highly innovative feature is the ability to show hydrographic survey data . Depending on the data available, the survey data can be shown as depth dots like the Argus data or a color contour overlay. You can choose which form to show the survey depths when both types are available.

A separate post will detail these and the other options due to the extensive functionality and capabilities.

4. View Control

View controls are on the right side of the screen, these include:

Full screen option at the top right which allows Chart View to cover your entire screen.

Zoom controls at the bottom right .

Street view is selected via the yellow Pegman. Stree view is enabled by clicking and dragging the Pegman to a location on the map. The map will automatically switch to the street view and the street view control will replace the yellow Pegman. To exit street view click the arrow icon located in the upper left corner .