The
Basics
Views
Controls
Information Displays
The Whole Thing in a Very Small Nutshell
SimGolf's Course Architect is a very powerful 3-D design program. In order to let you plop down a new fairway and then play it, the Course Architect uses elements of a CAD (computer-aided design) application. This gives you almost unlimited creative power -- but it can require a very steep learning curve to master the tools that let you flex your creative design muscles.
For this reason we've included some printed tutorials that we strongly recommend you work through before you plunge into course design. Once you've done the tutorials, you can use this Reference Guide to answer any specific questions you have when you get down to work.
After you open up an existing course you will see something like this:
The Course Architect's user interface has different views that let you see the course in various ways, several sets of controls to change the details of the course, and informational displays to give you quantitative facts about what's happening on the course. Each of these elements will be covered in detail in the Reference Guide.
Views
The Course Architect has four distinct types of panes in the window -- the Top View, the Objects View, the Center Line View and the Camera View -- although only two of them actually show you what's on the course. To adjust the size of these different views, pass your mouse over the border between panes until the cursor changes to a double line with arrows. Click and drag the borders to change the view size.
The Top View
This view is the one in the upper left-hand pane.
It is an overhead perspective on the course. From here you control and place your camera(s) (the triangular shape with a small colored square at its vertex). The Top View is also where you can select parts of your course to edit using the Area Selector and Shape Selector tools.
The Objects View
This view is the default upper right-hand pane.
Here you can choose from a gallery of thumbnail object pictures (plants, rocks, etc.) to find objects you want to place on your course to make it look more aesthetically pleasing.
The Center Line View
The Objects View will change to the Center Line View when you choose Center Line from the Edit menu.
This new view makes the Top View display the flagstick, center line and tees for any of the holes on your course, letting you move them around the way you want.
The Camera View
This is the view in the lower portion of the screen.
It shows you what the active camera sees. This is the primary view for judging the results of your work.
Controls
There are three different types of controls in the Course Architect. There are tools, available from the Toolbar; commands available as choices on the drop-down menus from the Menu Bar, and commands available from special pop-up menus.
1. The Toolbar
The Toolbar is initially displayed vertically in the margin to the left of the Top View. Each button on the Toolbar represents a tool, or in most cases a set of tools, to change the course in some specific way. When you pick a tool, the cursor changes into an icon of that tool. To cancel a tool and return the cursor to its normal state, click the topmost button (the Default Cursor button) on the Toolbar, or right-click in either the Top View or the Camera View and choose Cancel Tool from the pop-up menu.
2. The Menu Bar
The Menu Bar along the top of the screen contains four drop-down menus: File, Edit, View and Help. You use these menus to conduct such operations as opening or closing files, editing features of your course, and altering the ways you can look at your course.
3. Pop-Up Menus
When most tools are active (including Default Cursor), right-clicking in either the Top View or the Camera View will open a pop-up menu that allows you to control various aspects of the view. The pop-up menu below appears after right-clicking in the Top View.
When certain tools are active, right-clicking will open other pop-up menus that are specific to those tools.
Information
Displays
Information about the course is available on the line along the bottom of the window. General information and measurements appear in the Status Bar, while the units of measurement are shown to the right of that bar.
The Status Bar
The Status Bar is in the lower-left part of the screen.
This is Information Central for the Course Architect. Holding down the mouse button while the cursor is in Default mode (as well as many other modes) will tell you the type of terrain at that spot as well as its exact coordinates on your course using XYZ values. (X and Y are the rectilinear coordinates you see in the Top View, while Z is the height coordinate.) Moving the cursor over a specific control will show you that control's function. Keep an eye on the Status Bar -- it can be a big help!
Units of Measure
The units of measure the Course Architect uses can be controlled by the two boxes in the lower-right corner of the screen on the same line as the Status Bar.
If you click in either box you will be able to change the units of measure to feet, inches, and so forth. This affects all the entry boxes in the Course Architect, and is very helpful when you want to fine-tune your course in something less than three-foot increments. The left-hand box sets the units used for X and Y (rectilinear) coordinate measurements. The right-hand box sets the units for Z coordinates (height).
The Whole
Thing in a Very Small Nutshell
Here's the big picture, the core concept, the underlying procedural model, the DNA double helix of the Course Architect:
Use the Top View to position one or more cameras so you can see in the Camera View what feature you want to change. Then pick a command from the Menu Bar or a pop-up menu, a tool from the Toolbar or an object from the Objects View. Use the tool to make the change you want and see how the change looks in the Camera View. Use the Center Line View to help you change a hole's dimensions.
Sounds simple! And, with a little practice, it is.
The first golf balls were made of wood, up until the advent of the featherie in the early 1600s. "Featheries" were made of stitched leather casings filled with feathers. The leather would shrink while the drying feathers would expand, thus keeping the balls taut. They were made by hand and worked well with the delicate wooden clubs of the times. Featheries lasted in Scotland for 250 years until the Guttie came along.