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RelMo Design
When you
first start version 5, the many changes are not immediately obvious. You might
notice a new panel in the Control Bar called views. You might also notice the
addition of several new menu items. If you close the program down and restart it
you might notice that the toolbars remember where they were last located, so you
could customise your RelMo experience even more. When you start to use this
version however the many changes soon become noticeable. Points now highlight
themselves as and when you move close to them. This makes it very easy to
determine which point will be selected using the many tools which require point
selection. Line selection too has changes dramatically. Rather than click on a
point forming a line, you can now select the line itself. The line highlights
itself as you move over it, and makes it very easy to spot which line you are
selecting.
As an
extension to selecting lines, there is also a completely new line segment
selection tool. This allows you to manipulate individual line segments rather
than just the whole line. You can move segments, generate intersecting line
segments, create offsets and parallel segments, in fact many of the tools for
lines can now be applied just to one segment at a time. Line and segment moving
has also been enhanced so that you see the line moving in 2D views as you drag
it across the screen.
The most
powerful change in version 5 is undoubtedly the introduction of multiple printed
pages through the Layout Page Manager. This feature allows you to create an
unlimited number of printed pages each, if you want, using a different printer
and/or page size. Layout pages are incredibly powerful and can incorporate not
only scale plans as you'd expect, but multiple scale plans on the same page, all
at different scales should you so choose. You can also display 3D views on the
same page too. Naturally all the usual Windows features such as Print Preview
are also available in this completely new screen.
In keeping
with the RelMo design philosophy of making everything into a visual editing tool
if at all possible, to insert a plan or view you just drag it into the relevant
layout page. Also available for using in the Layout manager are text boxes,
lines, arrows, polygons and a whole range of normal drawing objects you'd
expect. We've also included a way of inserting objects from any other OLE
compliant program directly into a Layout Page as well. You can insert virtually
anything onto printed page now, and even edit it in place, should you want to.
Images, Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and many other program
items can be inserted quickly and easily onto the page. The easiest method has
to be to open the Windows Explorer, and drag the document or image onto the
Layout page. RelMo immediately creates an embedded version of that file and
displays it accordingly.
In use
you'll find that placing everything correctly onto a page is simplicity itself.
Just drag it to the correct position, or grab hold of one of the drag handles to
resize it. Text boxes can also be rotated using an intuitive drag handle as
well. The range of features available cannot be explained in just a few lines
here, so why not try it out for yourself.
Coupled
with this new style of printing plans has been the removal of the old method of
printing plans in 2D. Now if you choose print from the 2D file menu, you'll get
an image of the current screen in exactly the same way as you do in 3D views.
To use
Layout Pages to their fullest extent, we realised that we had to introduce some
way of generating multiple views or windows on a particular survey. Since RelMo
is both a 2D scale drawing package and a 3D animated viewer, it seemed sensible
to design multiple views which not only could be embedded into a printed page,
but also provided an easy way of recreating exactly the same 3D scene or 2D plot
time and time again. Also available for the first time are multiple cameras. You
can now have a camera in whole host of objects and switch between them at will
as an animation sequence is running. All this and more is controlled through the
all new Views panel of the Control Bar.
To further
enhance the overall usefulness of RelMo, we've included a Download Utility
program with this release. This is designed to interface directly with your
survey equipment, download the data and import it directly into RelMo. Gone is
the necessity to use third party software to download the data. For those that
prefer to carry out their surveying by hand, or for those times when you have
hand measured data to insert into a survey, there is also a new Design Point
tool which enables you to create points and lines using a variety of common
surveying techniques. For those of you who prefer to use RelMo more as a CAD
package, this tool should prove invaluable.
Since the
last release, we've had a number of requests for specific analysis tools. You
can now create cross sectional views with a couple of mouse clicks. Rather than
just display a simple line profile however, RelMo can also display the cross
section so that the terrain beyond the section remains visible. This helps your
clients visualise exactly what is being shown.
Another
powerful analysis tool is the Visibility plot, or VisPlot for short. Set a
target location, and RelMo will calculate what other areas of the terrain are
visible from that point and which are hidden. You can choose to include complex
features in a VisPlot too, and because VisPlot data has a height element, the 3D
display must be seen to be believed.
We've also
included a Slope Analysis tool as well. Using this you can see at a glance what
areas of your survey have a dangerously steep slope, or what areas would be
suitable for construction. In a closely related area, Contour Maps have been
enhanced considerably. Rather than generate contours as required, contours are
now created as objects in their own right. You have more control over the
contour generation now too.
The merging
of lines and points was introduced in an earlier version. This version has an
even faster method of point selection, but this relies on there being only one
point at any one location (to the nearest millimetre) in any one object. Older
existing surveys were created without this strict enforcement of only one point
per location, so duplicate points were common. As well as being inefficient for
display purposes, the point searching routines cannot work as well with
duplicate points. RelMo now merges duplicate points automatically whenever a
survey is opened, and can be forced using an option in the Points or Objects
menu. Any features using the point, such as lines or triangles, are transferred
to the merged point automatically.
As with all
releases however it is the changes behind the user interface that make the real
difference. Lots of background changes have been made including a particularly
effective enhancement to the speed that RelMo redraws the screen in 3D. Complex
line and point codes have also been considerably enhanced.
We trust that these
background changes pass largely unnoticed by you, in which case we've succeeded.
If something doesn't work as expected however, please contact us for advice. It
may be that we've introduced a bug, or it might be just that we expected you to
perform an action in a certain way, but you've found another way. Either way we
welcome your reports and will endeavour to rectify any of the problems you
encounter in the use of RelMo.
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