Whole Farm Maps

Good irrigation design involves channels, drains and roads as well as the landforming of the fields

Compute-a-Grade Plus adds an additional module to Compute-a-Grade called Plot. This module is for the production of whole farm maps. These can then be transferred to a CAD program via a DXF file. Plot can bring together a number of Field or Ditch design files and use them to produce maps or long sections. The main capabilities of Plot are as follows:-

• Maps can be constructed from many Field design files. Processing of these files is automated. Maps can show any or all of the following:-
  • Natural surface.
  • Finished surface.
  • Cut or fill.
  • Contours. (Contours can be drawn from design or RL files.)
  • Boundaries of each design.
  • Coordinates.
  • Border.
• Extensive use is made of flags to set options. Here are just a few are:-
  • Letter height.
  • Rotation of the lettering.
  • Coordinate format.
  • The Scale may be set.
  • Individual margins can be set for each side.
  • Different layers may be used.
  • Different pens can be selected for each layer.
• Long sections can be drawn using Ditch design files for banks, drains, channels and pads. Any or all of the following can be shown on a long section:-
  • Natural surface.
  • Chainage.
  • Finished surface.
  • Depths and/or heights of cut or fill.
  • Volumes of cut and/or fill.
  • Widths.
• Summary tables can be produced for maps and long sections. The format for these tables is defined in an ASCII file so that tables can be set up for each user.
• Output for the program can go:-
  • Direct to a plotter.
  • To a plotter file, for plotting at a latter date.
  • To selected CAD programs, using DXF, for additional information to be added and then plotted from the CAD program.
• The plotter languages supported for direct plotting are HPGL1 and HPGL2.

Plot is still a DOS text based program so it will run on the minimal type hardware that Compute-a-Grade does.