Common Tasks

Zoom

Zooming in and out in the View button view and Print button print modes is achieved by holding down the left mouse button on your target and dragging the mouse up or down.

In Edit button edit mode, you may use the Zoom button zoom tool and zoom by holding down the shift key on your keyboard and following the same procedure as above.

You may zoom to show a complete layer on the screen at once by right clicking on the layer on the tree on the left of the screen, then clicking on ‘zoom to layer’. This is often handy if you “loose” your map due to zooming too far in, out or elsewhere and can not find it. Simply right-click on the top level of the layer tree, then click on ‘zoom to layer’.

Pan

Panning around your map in the view and edit modes is achieved by holding down the right mouse button and dragging the map.
In Edit button edit mode, you may pan by holding down the shift key on your keyboard and following the same procedure as above.

Ruler

The Ruler tool enables you to measure distances and areas on your map. Also, when in ruler mode, when you hover over a GPS point, the latitude, longitude and altitude of that point will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. To use the ruler tool click on the Ruler Button ‘Ruler’ tool when in View Button View or Edit button Edit mode. You can then click on a point to start your measurement from. A pink line is drawn from this starting point to the current mouse position. Clicking again will continue the line and you can carry on adding segments to your measurement.
Associated with this pink line are three measurements which can be viewed in the properties area:

Distance - the total length of pink line (in metres)
Distance3D – when measuring between GPS points, this value is the distance between points incorporating change in elevation.
Circumference - the total length of the pink line plus the length from the end of the line back to the start position (if you drew 3 sides of a square, it would give you the total circumference of that square).
Area - the total area enclosed by the ‘Circumference’.
AltitudeChange – Measures the change in altitude between two GPS points. (Measures the change between the last two clicked points).

Once you have finished with your measurement or want to start a new one, you can use the Tick button ‘Tick’ or Cross Button ‘Cross’ button in the top right corner of the display to remove the pink line.

Send shapes between layers

Occasionally when you are drawing, for some reason you may draw a polygon in the wrong layer (e.g. you might complete a shape that becomes a ‘building’ because the building layer is selected when you wanted it to be a paddock in the paddocks layer.

Rather than having to delete the shape and then re-draw it in the correct layer, you can send the shape to another layer. To move a polygon from one layer to another do the following:

Make sure the layer you want to move the shape from is selected
Click on the 'Send to layer' button at the top of the screen.
Click on the polygon that you want to send from one layer to another.
A window will pop up asking you to select which layer you want to move the shape to. Select the layer you want to move it to and then click “OK”
You then have the option to delete to original polygon. In most cases you will want to delete the original so click on “Yes”.
You have now successfully moved the polygon from one layer to another.

Show lengths of lines in polygon or polyline layer

Click on the polygon or polyline layer in the layer tree that you wish to show the lengths of individual sides for.
Change the “Show Lengths?” property in the properties area to “True”

Download the latest version of WMCmap

The latest version of WMCmap is available here.