This Client Server article is republished in its entirety from 2009 for reference purposes.

By Sébastien Côté – Raster Support Group
11 August 2009 Modified: 12 August 2009

Descartes V8i offers a completely redesigned Merge tool. The illustrations below show how much this tool has evolved.

Here is the tool settings dialog of the Merge tool under XM:

The tool setting dialog of the new version has not changed much. Notice that, in the V8i version, the Crop tool is now alone on the dialog.

V8i:

XM:

However, in the V8i version, a second dialog opens when the area to be merged is selected. Here are the additional settings of the Merge tool under Descartes V8i:

• Area Type: Selecting a view in the Area dialog can define the area to merge. Also, the Element area is now replaced with Shape. The tool works a bit differently than the XM version, but the result is the same.
• The most important enhancement is the ability to rasterize and merge vectors in the output raster. There are now three available options for Elements to Process.
  1. Vectors and Rasters
  2. Vectors only
  3. Rasters only
•  Enabling the Use Line Mapping option is only available when merging vectors (vectors only or vectors and rasters). The settings of this option were available in XM with the Stamp Vectors tool. In Descartes V8i, those settings are now in the Rasterize dialog. If this option is disabled, the line width will be rasterized using one pixel per line width. In other words, a line width of one will be rasterized at the width of one pixel in the output file, a line width of two will have a width of two pixels, and so on.
• In Descartes V8i, the result of the merge can be attached to the design file by selecting the Create New Attachment(s) option. If the option is not selected, the result will not be attached.
• In Descartes XM, there were Transparent, Warp to Area, and Clipped options. In Descartes V8i, the Transparent option is automatically enabled when the Create New Attachment(s) option is selected. The option Warp to Area is no longer supported. The Clipped option has been renamed Fill Clipped Area. In V8i, when Fill Clipped Area is selected, the pixels of the clipped area assume the MicroStation background color, instead of just applying a clip to the data.
• With the new Merge tool, the output resolution can be set with multiple parameters. In XM, the only settings available were Based On and User Define. If the User Define option was selected, the user could only set the resolution by setting the pixel size. In Descartes V8i, the output can be directly set at the appropriate resolution for a project.
• Another great feature added to this tool is the Output Type. Notice that there is now a drop-down menu for Output Type. When the Multiple Files option is selected, the DGN and model that define that grid must also be selected. If the model is in a different coordinate system, Descartes V8i will perform the appropriate transformations. The rules defining the grid model are very simple. The program scans the DGN for all the strings and that string will be the output file name of that region. The region is then defined by processing a flood, starting at the string origin, until a closed region is defined by vector elements. Therefore the string must only contain valid characters to create an output file name and must be surrounded by vectors to define the area. The next step is to create a mosaic of rasters. There is no need to attach the grid model to the DGN; just selecting it is enough.
   

See Also

Client Server Archive

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