User's Guide

FasTrac Millennium User’s Guide – May 2003
Adjusting Views
3.4 Saving and Organizing Views
This section describes how to save and organize your views.
3.4.1 Saving Views
Once you have all the parameters defined for a given view, you will want to save it. When saving
a view, you have the option of just saving the view or of saving the view as a bitmap file.
For most purposes, the liquid databases are such powerful tools that there is little
need to save a large number of views. The first four views you create correspond to the
four numbered hot buttons. Traditionally, the first view is your overview map; the
other four views are those that you use the most. Therefore, you should try to only save
views that you know you will use many times. You may also save views specifically for
SEQUENCER use.
1. Select the View > Save As command to open the
Save View As menu, which has a pull-down list
labeled View Name.
2. Select a view from the pull-down list, or key in a new
name. If you use an existing view name, the old view
will be overwritten. Use descriptive names that will
help you identify them later.
3. Click the Use Bitmap button to save the view to the
bitmap file specified in the Bitmap Filename text box, as described below. The bitmap name
should be eight or less letters, followed by the .bmp extension. If you do not add an
extension, the system automatically adds the .bmp extension.
If you save the view as a bitmap, you save everything except the background and logos as a .bmp
file. Your system stores views as full color images; therefore, the number of actual colors used is
quite small. One advantage is that recall may be somewhat faster for bitmap views saved with
this approach, depending upon your hardware configuration. In addition, you can export a view’s
bitmap to a paint program. You can then add features, and return the finished product to the
system. The only restrictions pertain to the set of colors used by map features.
If you choose not to save the view without using a bitmap, you store the data with the saved
view, but not as part of it. In other words, the system knows which background to put with a
foreground but does not save both as a single view. It can also save all the mapping parameters,
such as rivers and roads, as a data file. The result is that when you call up a view, the system first
opens the background map and then draws all the rivers, roads, communities, radar, and lightning
(if available), as required. It then displays the finished map. There are three advantages to this
approach. First, it uses less room on the hard drive because it stores fewer bitmaps. Second, if
you choose to change fonts or backgrounds at some point, it will use the latest choice in putting
your view together. Finally, the system does not have to create a foreground bitmap.
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