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Top View

The Top View is the pane in the upper-left corner of the screen. The view from the top is better they say, and the Course Architect is no exception. The Top View shows what your course would look like from directly above, floating in, say, a hot air balloon -- a balloon with amazing maneuverability, as you'll soon see.

You'll notice a modern-art-looking warped triangle with a red square when you arrive in the Top View. This is the camera, and it controls what you see in the Camera View. Check out Cameras for more information on this multifarious piece of art.

Concept
Moving Around
Selecting and Altering Parts of the Course
Moving Tees and Holes
Right-click Menu

Concept

The Top View is where you do most of the course design work. This is the place for selecting areas of your course to modify, moving cameras and altering the landscape. Although you can do many of the same things in the Camera View, the Top View gives you better control over selecting and moving around your course. The Camera View is better for seeing what you've done in the Top View and making finer adjustments.

To adjust the size of the pane, drag the borders with the mouse.

It's important to connect what you see in the Top View with what you see in the Camera View. One way the Course Architect helps you do this is with a red and white Surveyor's Pole. After clicking the Default Cursor button, click and hold close to the camera within its view angle in the Top View. You'll see the Surveyor's Pole appear in the Camera View.

If you move the cursor around, you'll see the Surveyor's Pole dance across the Camera View landscape like a Keystone Kop on too much caffeine. At the same time, you'll also notice in the Status Bar that the X, Y, and Z coordinates change to wherever the Surveyor's Pole is. This is sometimes the only way of connecting where you are in each view.
 

Moving Around

There are several ways of controlling what you see in the Top View:

• You can use the scroll bars on the right and bottom of the pane, the same way you would for any Windows program.
• You can use the commands listed in the right-click menu.
• You can use the Magnifying Glass to zoom in or out of the view.
• You can use the Go to Hole... command from the View menu to travel to any particular tee or flagstick.
• You can use the Center and Fit in Top View commands in the Center Line View to bring the elements of specific holes into the Top View.
  

   

Selecting And Altering Parts Of Your Course

Once you can see what you want to work on, it's time to get down and dirty, or at least down; we haven't perfected SimDirt yet.

 

Selections

When you want to make a change on your course, you normally want to change only a part of the course, not the entire thing. You can do this by "selecting" just the portion you want to affect and leaving other parts alone. A selected area will be surrounded by a snake of white dashes, also known as a marquee. Somewhere along the marquee will be a small white Control Square. Right-clicking on this square lets you perform various operations on the selection.

Selecting Terrain

You can select terrain by dragging different shapes on your course using the Shape Selector tools or the Area Selector tools.

NOTE: If you somehow get stuck with a large part or all of your course selected, just click the De-select All button on the Toolbar.

 

Changing Selected Terrain

Once you've selected the part of your course you want to work on, you can change that area by using the Fill, Smooth and Sculpt tools. Simply pick the appropriate tool and pass the cursor over the selected area. Click on each tool's name above to find out how to use them.

 

Moving tees and holes

Use the Top View in conjunction with the Center Line command from the Edit menu to modify the elements (tees, turnpoints and flagstick) of a hole. See "How do I move a tee?" for more information.

Right-click Menu

When no specific tool is active, right-clicking on any unselected area of the Top View will open a pop-up menu that gives you control over views

 

View Actual Size

"Actual" here is used in a metaphorical sense. This command changes the zoom factor to what the course would look like if you were "actually" 3 miles above it in a hot air balloon.

 

Fit to Window

This command zooms the view out until the entire course fits in the Top View pane.

 

Go to Camera (Color)

This command moves the Top View to the camera you choose. When you highlight the command, a submenu lets you pick one of the available cameras, and the Top View shifts to show you where that camera is.

Note: This command does not change which camera is the active one. The scene in the Camera View will not change when you use this command.

 

Center Camera (Color)

This command moves the camera you choose to the center of the Top View. When you highlight the command, a submenu lets you pick one of the available cameras, and that camera moves into the Top View.

Note: This command does not change which camera is the active one. The scene in the Camera View will not change when you use this command.

 

Show Rulers

This command toggles whether or not the rulers appear along the edges of the Top View.

 

Show Numbers

This command toggles on and off the ID tags for each of the course's large grid squares.

 

Show Objects

This command toggles on and off whether objects appear in the Top View. (This doesn't affect whether objects appear in the Camera View.) Objects only appear as colored dots in the Top View, to show their positions relative to other features.

 

Show Smooth Relief

This command improves the relief smoothing in the Top View, at the cost of slowing down computer time.

 

Use Client Area Relief

This command improves the color resolution in the Top View.

Duncan Forbes, of the Gentleman Golfers of Leith, authored the first written set of rules for golf in 1744, more than three centuries after the game's start.