Working with Overlays in Lakes Software Applications

One of the cornerstones to working with Lakes Environmental Software products is the drawing area. This is where all objects and layers are displayed for viewing and editing. One tool users have to properly control what is displayed in the drawing area is the Overlays tab on the Tree View.

This tab allows users to specify which objects should be displayed, order layers to present the best possible display, or graphically edit specific layers or objects. Checked layers are shown in the drawing area, and they are displayed in the order they are listed in the Overlays tab. In the example image above, Site Domain Boundary will be on top of all other layers in the drawing area while Tutorial_Map_15km.jpg is the bottom layer. Lakes recently added several new options to the Overlays tab to give users better control of their drawing area.

The Uncheck All and Check All options give users the ability to quickly manage all listed layers for hiding or viewing.

Disable Selection gives the user the ability to prevent the selected layer from being selected in the drawing area. This is especially useful for large base maps which the user may never want to edit or otherwise select while working with model objects. A layer that has been disabled from selection will have a lock icon displayed.

Disable Graphical Editing prevents the selected layer from being moved, resized, or deleted. The layer or object can still be selected in the drawing area so that it can be edited but it is locked to the drawing area graphically.

These new options provide even more control to users to efficiently manage their projects.