Advanced Operations
These operations assume a general familiarity with WMC Map and WMC Map’s common operations. You may need to refer to earlier parts of this booklet if you are not very familiar with WMC map.
You may have mapped your farm with the idea of subdividing paddocks or re-fencing in mind. This can be accomplished in one of several ways. We have created a step by step guide for you to follow to make subdividing and re-fencing easy. From here on we will call it ‘re-fencing:
In this section, we will work through an example to show how to refence the five paddocks in the lower left corner of the image on the right into three equal sized paddocks.
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1. Calculate the total area that you wish to split up.
- Create a new polygon layer and label it “Areas to re-fence” .
- Draw a polygon around the boundary of the area you are going to subdivide. This will give you the area that you wish to subdivide. You can then figure out how many fields/paddocks you want in that area and what size they are going to be.
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2. Change the “Text Colour” of the “Areas to re-fence” layer to red or something other than the colour of the paddock text so that you can see the total area that you are going to re-fence. Change the “Area Decimal-Places” property to ‘2’ to get a more accurate area figure to divide into how many paddocks you desire.
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3. By this stage you should have something similar to the image to the right. The gray area (12.25ha) is the area that we wish to subdivide. This layer is below the paddock layer and we can see the existing paddocks over the gray area.
4. In this example we wish to divide the 12.25ha into three equally sized paddocks of about 4.08ha each.
5. In the layer that you wish to create your subdivided polygons in (generally your “paddocks” or “fields” polygon layer), use the  move tool or  add new polygons in to draw your subdivided areas.
- To make it easier to view what you are doing, right click on your polygon layer that you are drawing your new fields in and then click “Move to top”. This will bring the layer to the front so that you can view it. Make sure that you have the layer “Fill Colour” set to “Transparent” in the properties section.
6. Using the move tool, drag the corners of the polygons around to get your field the desired size.
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 7. The image to the right shows the fences moved to give the desired size (4.08ha) paddocks. It may be necessary to insert points in lines to create new bends when moving polygons around to suit. (Fill colour set to orange in fields polygon).
8. Turn off the “Area to re-fence” layer by deselecting the checkbox next to the layer name.
9. Change "Fill Colour" back to transparent.
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At the end you should see your re-fenced fields similar to the image above.
You can then upload new corner points to your GPS as explained the Upload points to your GPS section.
Instead of using a 2D planar area, in hilly areas there will actually be more surface area in a paddock than a planar area calculates. You can use your GPS and WMC Map to calculate the surface area of an entire polygon layer. To do this you need both a polygon layer (usually your paddock/field layer) and a set of points containing altitudes for WMC Map to calculate the surface area from.
To create your 3D surface area:
- Draw up your paddocks and map as you would normally.
- Clear your GPS memory, then go out and mark waypoints in the area that you wish to calculate a 3D surface area for. To do this we recommend taking points at the top and bottom of hills and valleys, and where ever the slope changes. To mark points, you simply press MARK then ENTR (GPS60 series). There is no need to label your points. The more points you take, the more accurate the 3D area will be.
- Download your altitude waypoints into WMC Map as you would normally.
- It is a good idea to rename your new points “Altitude points” or something similar so that you do not get mixed up and select the wrong layer for WMC Map to use in it’s calculation.
- Now is a good time to save your work.
- ‘Right mouse click’ on the layer that you want to create a 3D surface area for (EG, paddocks).
- Select “Calculate 3D areas”.
- Select your altitude points layer to include in the calculation by clicking the checkbox next to the name, then click OK.
- At this stage WMC Map may take a while to calculate the 3D surface areas. Don’t worry, this is normal. Just wait for it to finish and you will be able to continue working like normal.
- If you now click on your polygon layer for which you just created a 3D surface area calculation, you will see in the properties under the Measurements section that there is now a “Total Area” and a “Total Area 3D” property.
- If you change the “Use 3D Areas?” property to true, the areas displayed in the paddocks will be the 3D surface area that you just calculated.
- Save your project to retain these areas.
Due to the inherent inaccuracy of handheld GPS over time, you may find that if you record some paddocks one day, then go back and record them again next month, the whole paddock could have shifted by a few metres. This could also be a problem if you record some paddocks, then later go back and record more to find that they do not line up. To get around this problem, we have created the “Move entire layer” tool.
To use the Move Entire Layer tool to line up your paddocks:
- When you are recording points, mark a waypoint on an existing point that you recorded last time. Eg, a trough or angle post.
- Download the new points as you would normally.
- When the points are downloaded, right click on the new layer you want to move, and then select “Move Entire Layer”.
- Type in the amount by which you want to move your points in each direction (for left or downwards, type a negative sign before the number. The unit is metres).
- Click ‘OK’ and your entire layer will move by this amount. You may need to have several tries at moving the layer before you get it exactly where you want it.
Handy tip: Before moving the layer, use the measure tool to find out how far in each direction you need to move the layer.
Sometimes you might want to merge several layers into one (eg, if you have taken several sets of GPS points that you wish to combine).
To merge layers:
- Right click on the layer that you want to merge your layers into.
- Select ‘Merge Layers into this’
- Check (click on) the white box next to any layers that you want to merge into the layer that you right clicked.
- Press ‘OK’
- After the layers are merged, you will be asked if you wish to remove the layers that you merged into the first layer. Select ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ depending on whether you wish for the layer to stay as a separate layer.
If you have another farm management program such as FarmKeeper, P-Plus or Concepts Rural Suite, you may export your map from WMC Map and import it directly into your farm management program. Each layer is exported as a shapfile or dxf, which will load directly into other farm map or GIS software.
To export a shapefile or dxf:
- Right-click on the layer you wish to export
- Click ‘Export’ then in the submenu ‘Export to Shapefile’ or ‘Export to dxf’.
- If you choose to export to dxf, you will need to specify if you want to export your points with easting/northing (NZ Map Grid) or lat/long coordinates.
- Select a location to save your file and type a name, then press OK.
- Your layer has now been exported as a shapefile or dxf and you may import that file from your farm management program.
Tumonz mapping software covers the whole of New Zealand.
To export your farm map and then import it into Tumonz:
- Right-click on the layer you wish to export
- Click ‘Export’ then in the submenu ‘Export to GPX’.
- Select a location to save your GPX file and type a name, then press OK.
- Your layer has now been exported as a GPX file and you may import that file from your Tumonz.
Exporting to KML files allows you to view all or part of your farm map in Google Earth.
If you do not have the Google Earth software installed on your computer it can be downloaded from the Google Earth website (www.earth.google.com). Once you have installed Google Earth just double click the exported KML file to view your layer.
- Right-click on the layer you wish to export
- Click ‘View in Google Earth’.
- Select a location to save your KML file and type a name, then press OK.
- Your layer has now been exported as a KML file. If you have Google Earth installed on your computer it will automatically start up and display your exported layer.
- Note: Some graphics cards have issues trying to display Google Earth at the same time as WMC Map. If you run into trouble, we suggest exporting a KML file using the method below, then closing WMC Map before you view your map.
- Right click on the layer you wish to export.
- Hover the mouse over “Export“.
- Click “Export to Google Earth (KML)”
- Select a location to save your KML file and type a name, then press OK.
- Your layer has now been exported as a KML file.
- Save a KML file that you have created in Google Earth. NOTE: When saving your file check that it is not saving a KMZ file which is the Google Earth saving default. Be sure to select KML in the save dialog box.
- From WMC Map, open a new or existing farm map then click
‘Import’.
- Browse to the folder containing your KML file, and select your KML file to import.
- Press ‘OK’ and your file will load.
- If you do not see your data after it has loaded, expand the layers tree (press the ‘+’ button next to your farm name in the top left window) the right click on your imported layer and click ‘Zoom to layer’.
Have you tried importing points and selecting the ‘trough’ point type in the points properties? You can create up to 20 custom point types to insert into your maps.
To create a custom point you must save an image as a windows bitmap (.bmp) file using a program such as ‘paint’ (found under the accessories section in your start menu).
Save your images as custom1.bmp, custom2.bmp, etc in ‘C:\Program Files\WMC Technology\WMCmap\textures\texture’
You will then be able to use your .bmp image as a point type by selecting that custom point from within WMCmap.
