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FSX Lake elevation workflow

mmann

mmann

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I am looking for a quick way to set the elevation for numerous lake polygons using SBuilderX 3.14 and Global Mapper 15. I can easily set the individual vertex elevation of each poly from the terrain mesh, which works great for sloped polys like rivers, but I need each lake poly to have all its vertices set to the same value.

I have tried using the tools in Global Mapper to assign an averaged elevation to an attribute field, but SBuilderX just keeps saying "the field is not a double precision number and will be ignored"; despite setting the precision of the field in Global Mapper.

So is there an automated workflow using these two programs? At current I have to select each lake poly in SBuilderX and slew in FSX to get the elevation. This works fine for a few hundred lake polys; but I have many thousands to do.
 
I have figured out a better workflow using the CDED & NHN data from GeoBase:

1. In Global Mapper with all the Lakes selected Right-Click and choose "Analysis/Measurement -> Calculate Elevation/Slope Stats for Selected Feature(s)...". When you go to export the Shapefile in the Shapefile Export Options under the Attribute Setup tab change the MODE_ELEV_M type from Float to String.

2. When Appending a Polygon ShapeFile in SBuilderX for Name or Label of Imported Polys choose MODE_ELE_M (notice the different spelling from GM) and now all your lake polys will be named with the elevation you need to set them to; no need to use FSX at all.

Not fully automated, but much quicker than before.
 
I have finally figured out a fully automated method:
  1. In Global Mapper with all the Lakes selected Right-Click and choose "Analysis/Measurement -> Calculate Elevation/Slope Stats for Selected Feature(s)..."
  2. In the Overlay Control Center select the lakes layer and click the "Options..." button
  3. In the Feature Types/Labels/Elevations tab for "Get 'Elevations' From Attribute Value" select MODE_ELEV_M
Now just append the polygon ShapeFile in SBuilderX in the normal way and all your lakes will be set to the proper elevation!
 
That's an awesome tip, Mike, thanks for sharing. Global Mapper is a very powerful tool, but many functions are quite hidden.
If Global Mapper continues to be used more and more for FS scenery creation we need an extra forum here!

Since GM has an interface for plugins I dream of a fs scenery plugin... imagine that... a scenery tool, capeable of working with layers, mesh, photo-scenery, vector elements....

Cheers,
Mark
 
Thanks, Mark. One caveat about the workflow; the one problem that will still exist is if the lake has islands. The water around the islands will not always be properly flattened; this might be caused by Global Mapper giving a different averaged elevation to the island poly's vertices than it does the lake poly's vertices. The solution is to apply the elevation in SBX (SBX has the correct elevation for the lake polygon so you just have to click the 'Set' button next to the Constant altitude edit box). This is only required for lakes with islands.
 
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