In this tutorial you will learn how to add imagery over the top of your terrain. This tutorial assumes you have completed and understood Tutorials 1. If you have not, it is highly recommended you do so before starting this tutorial. At the end of this tutorial you will be able to:

  • overlay satellite imagery over the terrain,
  • overlay CAD file imagery from a DXF file over the terrain.




Overlaying Satellite Imagery


In many circumstances you may want to anchor your design to a particular world location. This is the case when modelling an existing set of power lines and conductors, extending an existing set of constructions, or planning a power line layout for a site. Neara facilitates this process by allowing you to overlay satellite imagery and Latitude/Longitude information over the terrain. This is done by clicking on the Map Tool  This will bring up a Google Maps widget. You can zoom in and pan around the map. When you have found the target location that you want to overlay, left click on this location on the map. The Google Maps Widget will then close, and the satellite imagery will be overlaid over the terrain, once it is loaded. Your application will look something like this:




An additional feature of anchoring your design to a particular location is that when you move your mouse over the different views, the Latitude and Longitude of the cursor location will be displayed in the bottom right corner. 





Overlaying Imported CAD Imagery


In addition to being able to overlay satellite imagery over the terrain, you can overlay imagery from an imported DXF CAD file. An example use-case is if you have the property subdivision plans for a particular area, and you'd like to anchor your design using this data.

To overlay imagery from an imported CAD file, in the top menu bar select File > Import Terrain Overlay. This will bring up a popup. Click the Choose DXF File button, and select the desired DXF file to use as an overlay. Finally, click Apply. To close the popup and cancel the import, simply click away from the popup.


NOTE: the units used in the DXF file are assumed to be metres. Also, light colours (grey, white) will not show up well in the overlay, so we suggest you change the layer/entity colours in the CAD file to take this into account.




This completes this tutorial. We really value your feedback, queries, suggestions, send them all our way!