Online Guide – Custom User Object Types

Use user-defined object types to apply a consistent drawing scheme across all your map data objects – you can also share and quickly apply sets of user-defined objects. You can use this function to create different styles for printing, high-contrast editing etc. Click on any image to enlarge it.

The purpose of this short guide is to illustrate a few common ways to use Map Object Types to control the how your data is displayed. All the examples will use a few simple shapes (1) and associated text.

You can create entries for map object types in the User Object Types node (1) – in the example there is a folder (My Types) with to sub-folders (Paddocks and Names), each with one or more Map Object Types (Wire Fence, Wood Fence etc). The important property for each Map Object Type is the Code which you can assign by clicking on the edit box in the properties window (2) – the code can be any string. You can change how each type should draw using the other properties (3) for the selected map object (line / fill / text etc).

The last step is to assign the User Object Type Code to your map objects – in the example above Paddock 1 (1) was assigned the code for Wood Fence (2), and the Render using Object Type option selected.

All your map objects which are assigned User Object Type Codes will render using the properties assigned to the associated Map Object Types. You can quickly switch back to rendering your map objects with their native properties by simply turning off the folder containing the User Object Types (1).

If you want to create more that one drawing style set, you can create a new User Object Type folder with entries using the same Codes, or just copy/paste you first folder (1). You can select which set is applied by simply turning folders on/off.

The User Object Types also apply to text rendering. In the example a User Object Types called Names (1) was assigned a User Object Type Code N_Paddocks (2), and once the same code was assigned to the user text layers (3) the text was rendered according to the text settings defined for the user object type (4).

You can also quickly hide/show all objects of the same type by simply checking/unchecking the associated User Object Type (1). In the example above names and wire fence paddocks were hidden.