Layouts provide
an interface for composition of print jobs. A layout shows
a sheet of paper based on the default size and orientation of a paper
sheet for the default printer. We add components such
as maps, drawings and images to layouts by dragging and dropping them
into the layout. An item added to a layout is called
a frame. We can resize and
restyle frames, moving them into position as desired.
In addition to frames that automatically take their content from some component, we can add specialized types of frames such as text frames for commentary and titles, North arrows, scale bars, grids, and specialized types of frames designed to be parts of legends, which can entirely automate or greatly speed up the creation of legends. See the Legends topic for the use of legends in layouts.
Layouts have so many features they
require multiple topics. Get more information from:
Layouts are included in the free, read-only Manifold Viewer, even though Viewer does not print and does not include the File - Print and File - Print Preview menu commands. Layouts in Viewer can be used to compose displays for screen shots. Cool!
Layouts take virtually zero storage
space. All the data for layouts stays stored in the various
components that appear within the layout. We can create as many
layouts as we want that include frames with components from the same maps,
drawings and images in the project, arranged in different ways and using
different views in the frames that show them, without making the .map project file any bigger.
Layouts are made up of frames that are arranged on a virtual sheet of paper of the size specified in the page setup.
An item added to a layout is called a frame. When first added, a new frame fills the entire layout. The layout below shows three frames: a frame containing a satellite image from a web server as the largest frame, in the background, with a smaller frame above it showing a Bing Streets image server, and another frame that is a text frame with a title in yellow text.
Frames that show the contents of components in the project are called component frames. Component frames show content from components such as maps, drawings, or images. Drag and drop a component from the Project pane into a layout to add that component as a frame to the layout.
Besides component frames, layouts can have frames that are annotations, such as text frames, or which show specialized content for layouts, such as legends, North arrow frames or scale bar frames. North arrow frames and scale bar frames will automatically adjust their contents based on component frames in the layout.
Right-click in the Project pane and choose Create - New Layout to create a layout.
Open the layout. The layout appears sized to the last used paper size, orientation and margins.
If desired, choose File - Page Setup to specify a different paper size, orientation and margins for the layout.
Drag and drop a component into the layout. It appears as a frame that fills the layout.
Alt-click on the frame to pick it as the active frame. Edit handles will appear.
Resize the frame and move it as desired. Click anywhere outside the frame when done.
Alt-clicking a frame also pops open the Info pane with Style and other options for the frame.
Double-click within a frame to enable that frame for panning and zooming within the frame. Adjust the viewport as desired and then Click outside the frame when done.
Choose a command from the Cursor / Command mode toolbar button to add text frames and other types of frames.
Keep the Layers pane open when working with multiple frames. The Layers pane makes it easy to select frames in a busy layout, to delete a frame, to reorder frames, to turn frames off and on and much more.
Choose File - Print to print the layout.
Style tab controls in the Info pane allow us to alter the display characteristics of the frame such as the border or background color, and alignment commands allow us to automatically arrange multiple frames so they are aligned or stacked as we like. We can even transfer formatting from one frame to others.
Alt-click on a frame to pick that frame for editing, which allows us to resize the frame and to move it about. Picking a frame with an alt-click also turns on the Info pane for that frame. Style tab controls in the Info pane allow us to alter the display characteristics of the frame such as the border or background color. When a frame is alt-clicked, that also turns on the Scale pane to enable setting the scale in the frame as desired.
When we are happy with the size, position and style of the frame we click outside of the frame to finish editing it.
Double-click a frame to enable that frame for panning and zooming within the frame. Double-clicking a frame also turns on the Locations button, which allow us to jump the view in the frame to a saved Location, or to use the Windows choice in the Locations button to match the view shown by a frame to that shown in some other window, like a map window, that has been opened. When a frame is double-clicked for panning and zooming, that also turns on the Scale pane to enable setting the scale in the frame as desired.
Click outside the frame to move the focus for panning and zooming to the layout overall.
To print a layout, with the focus on the opened layout we choose File - Print in the main menu. The File - Print menu allows us to print either to hard copy printers or to create PDF files by using PDF printer drivers, such as Microsoft's built-in Print to PDF capabilities. See the discussion in the File - Print topic for information on printing to PDF.
To add a frame, drag and drop the component for the frame from the Project pane into the layout. Pick the new frame as the active frame by Alt-clicking it, or by right-clicking the new frame in the Layers pane and choosing Active. The frame can then be resized using edit handles and moved, and the style properties for the active frame will pop open in the Info pane.
To delete a frame, select it with a Ctrl-click and then choose Edit - Delete or press the Delete key. We can also select frames using the Layers pane.
Drag and Drop |
Drag and drop a component from the Project pane into the layout to add it to the layout as a frame. |
Alt-click |
Put the Alt-clicked frame into edit mode where it can be resized and moved. Drag a border or edit handle to resize. Click within the frame and drag to move the frame to a different position. |
Double-click |
Put the double-clicked frame into exclusive pan/zoom mode. All panning and zooming commands will apply only within that frame. This allows us to pan and zoom the view provided by the frame into that frame's component. If a double-clicked frame is partly off-screen or if it is too small for reasonable panning/zooming, the frame will be autozoomed to be larger, filling the layout window. |
Click |
Click outside a frame to end edit mode established by an Alt-click or to end pan/zoom mode established by a double-click. |
Esc |
Press the Escape key to exit alt-clicked mode for editing a frame (if there are no uncommitted changes) or double-clicked mode for panning/zooming a frame. |
Ctrl-click |
Ctrl-click a frame to select it, and Shift-ctrl-click to deselect a frame. Standard Manifold selection commands in windows work to select or to deselect frames in layouts. |
Shift-Esc |
Switch back to Default navigation mode. |
Set paper size, orientation of Portrait or Landscape, and margins. By default, margins are 25.4 mm (1 inch). Changing the paper size, orientation or margins with an existing layout that already has some frames will automatically adjust the placement and size of existing frames. Changes made in page setup will be saved into the layout. Changes made to page setup will be remembered as defaults in between Manifold sessions. |
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Launch the usual Windows dialog to print the layout. Any changes made during use of the File - Print dialog and subsequent dialogs to paper size, orientation or other attributes will temporarily try to adjust the placement and size of existing frames for that immediate print job, but will not be saved into the layout. Use File - Page Setup to make persistent changes to the layout. |
The usual Selection keyboard commands work, as well as Edit - Select All, Edit - Select None, and Edit - Inverse, from the main menu. A selected frame will be overlaid with partially transparent red selection color.
Ctrl-A |
Select all. |
Shift-Ctrl-A |
Select none. |
Ctrl-I |
Invert the selection. |
The same mouse selection commands work in layouts as they do in drawings. Adding the Ctrl key to a mouse click or click and drag makes selections. Adding the Shift key to those Ctrl mouse motions means to deselect.
Select |
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Ctrl-click |
Select or de-select the frame. Ctrl-clicking a selected frame will de-select it. |
Ctrl-click and drag |
Draw a selection box to select all frames any part of which is within the box. |
Ctrl-click-and-drag <release Ctrl> <finish dragging> |
Draw a selection box to select all frames entirely within the box. |
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De-Select |
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Shift-Ctrl-click |
De-select the frame. No effect if the frame is not selected. |
Shift-Ctrl-click and drag |
Draw a selection box to de-select all frames any part of which is within the box.
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Shift-Ctrl-click <release Ctrl> <finish dragging> |
Draw a selection box to de-select all frames entirely within the box. |
See the main Selections topic as well as the Example: Mouse Selection in a Drawing Window topic for illustrations using objects in drawings. The same motions apply to frames in layouts.
The main toolbar provides relevant command buttons when the focus is on a layout window. These allow us to show or hide frame margins, to choose the cursor / command mode, and to choose alignment commands:
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New - Close the current project and create a new, blank project. Manifold will prompt to save any unsaved projects and will provide an opportunity to cancel. See the Projects and .map Files topic. |
Open - Close the current project and open an existing .map project file. After browsing to and choosing the new .map file to be opened, Manifold will prompt to save any unsaved projects and will provide an opportunity to cancel. |
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Close - Close the current project. Manifold will prompt to save any unsaved projects and will provide an opportunity to cancel. Closing the current project will leave the Manifold desktop with no project open. |
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Save - Save the current project in a .map project file. If the project is a new project that has not yet been saved the usual Windows Save As dialog opens to allow specifying a name for the new, saved .map file. If the project has been opened from an existing .map file or if it has already been saved to a .map file the Save will be silent and will simply update the existing .map file. |
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Back - Go back one view in the active window. Not enabled until we have panned or zoomed at least once. |
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Forward - Go forward one view in the active window. Not enabled until we have used the Back button at least once. |
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Zoom to Fit - Zoom so the contents of the active layer fill the window. |
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Zoom In - Zoom in one step. |
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Zoom Out - Zoom out one step. |
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Margins - Show or hide fine lines that indicate the margins of each frame and the paper margins of the layout. Turning off frame margins provides a final look at the layout without virtual borders used in editing getting in the way. |
Cursor / command mode - The pull down menu shows options for the Cursor Mode Sample frames are specialized frames used to create legends.
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Alignment commands - Align or adjust selected frames to the active frame.
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Locations - Enabled when a frame containing a map, drawing, image, or labels layer has been enabled for panning and zooming with a Ctrl-click. Create a new Location or pan and zoom the window to an existing location. See the Locations topic for details on location commands in this button. |
Resize to Selected is typically used to resize and move a base legend frame so it wraps around legend frames that have been altered and moved about. Note this command alters the active frame to fit selected frames, where the other alignment commands adjust selected frames as guided by the active frame.
See the Legends topic for information on the Create Legend command, and the Layouts: Create Commands topic for information on other Create... commands. See the Layouts: Alignment Commands topic for examples of alignment commands.
Alt-clicking a frame in a layout opens the Info pane to the Style tab. All frames will show Background, Border and Padding controls. Text frames in addition will have additional controls to format text, and sample frames as used in legends will have additional controls to format the sample.
Background |
The fill color to use as the background for the frame. |
Border |
The stroke color to use for the border, and the thickness of the border line. |
Padding |
The width of a transparent margin between the contents of the frame and the edge of the frame. Often used to provide room for a wider border that has no overlap with the contents of the frame. |
Sample frame controls |
When a sample frame has been picked, style controls for the sample will appear. Style controls are the same as style controls for drawings. |
Sample width / position |
The size of the sample glyph and the position (left or right) within the frame. |
Sample shape |
The shape of the glyph used for the sample |
Total Style |
A button showing the combined effect of the other properties to create the illustrated Style for the sample glyph. |
Stroke Color |
The primary color applied in borders for area glyphs, for line glyphs and outlines for point glyphs.
Important: Setting Stroke color to transparent makes the glyph disappear completely. To render text symbology without using Stroke color, use the Symbol button to drill into the Symbol menu and set the Stroke width parameter to a very small width, such as 0.01. |
Fill Color |
The fill or secondary color. Applied to the interior of area glyphs. Also applied as the secondary color in point glyphs. |
Size |
The size of points, thickness of lines, and the spacing of hash patterns in areas. |
Symbol |
Choose symbology for the glyph. |
Text frame controls |
When a sample frame has been picked, style controls and a pane containing text will appear to enable formatting of the text part of the sample frame. Except for the text pane, controls are the same as style controls for labels. |
Total Style |
A button showing the combined effect of the other properties to create the illustrated Style for text. |
Stroke Color |
The primary color applied in fonts, as well as in label options and point styles that use a single color.
Important: Setting Stroke color to transparent makes text disappear completely. To render text symbology without using Stroke color, use the Symbol button to drill into the Symbol menu and set the Stroke width parameter to a very small width, such as 0.01. |
Fill Color |
The fill or secondary color. Applied to the interior of text options. Also applied as the secondary color in point styles used in label symbology. |
Size |
The font size of text. May be fractions such as a size of 0.1 or 2.8. The drop down menu provides a range of default choices. Enter a specific value into the box to specify a Size other than one of the default choices. |
Font |
Choose the font. The initial list provides fonts immediately available and used as standard fonts in most Windows editions. Choose Custom to pick a font from any font installed in the system using the standard Windows dialog. The font size setting from the Windows dialog is ignored in favor of using the Style pane's Size property button. |
Symbol |
Choose symbology for text. The drop down menu provides a range of default symbols, with a toolbar that allows configuration of the drop down menu. Press the More... button at the bottom of the drop down menu for the full Symbol dialog that provides more options. |
(text pane) |
Enter text that will appear in the frame. |
Update Frame |
Apply changes. Enabled when changes have been made. |
Choose File - Create- New Layout or Right-click into an empty portion of the Project pane and choose New Layout.
Provide a Name for the layout as desired, choose the paper format and orientation, and then click Create Layout. Optionally, to launch an SQL query that creates a layout in the Command window, press the Edit Query button.
In this example, we will use European A4 sized paper (similar to US Letter size) and we will use landscape orientation so the illustrations will better fit into this documentation.
A new layout component appears in the project. Double-click on the layout to open
it. Illustrations that follow show the layout window after it has
been undocked. Undock a window or pane by Shift-clicking
the title tab. We can zoom in or out and pan
the layout window as desired, using the usual commands that apply to windows.
A new layout starts out blank. A layout appears as if it were a sheet of paper sized to the default size of paper and default portrait or landscape orientation for the default printer, with a dark line border marking the edge of the paper. A very fine, light gray inner border indicates the default margin, similar in size to the default margin in Word. The faint margin lines are just a guideline for designing the layout. Margin lines do not appear in the final print.
We
can click the Margins button
to turn frame and page margins off and on. If we turn margins off,
we will see the layout as it will be printed.
If we would like to change the page size or margins, we can do so using the File - Page Setup dialog.
For example, to change page margins, open the layout and then choose File - Page Setup. In the dialog choose the desired margins. The default margins, 25.4 mm, are 1 inch margins. In the above illustration we change the default 25.4 mm margins to 10 mm margins. We press OK to apply the changes. For this example we will use A4 paper size and 10 mm margins.
Changing the paper size, orientation or margins with an existing layout that already has some frames will automatically adjust the placement and size of existing frames.
To add content to a layout, drag and drop a component such as a drawing, image, map, labels component, etc., from the Project pane into the layout window.
We drag and drop the Mexico example drawing from the Project pane into the layout. Dragging and dropping the Mexico drawing into the layout adds the first frame to the layout. A newly-added frame fills the layout, with the contents of the frame zoomed to fit the margins of the layout.
To resize or to move the frame, we Alt-click anywhere within the frame. Since a newly-added frame fills the layout we can click anywhere within the margins of the layout.
Alt-clicking within a frame picks that frame for editing. A darker border line appears around the frame with editing handles at the corners. To end editing mode we can click anywhere outside of the frame.
Alt-clicking a frame allows us to resize the frame by dragging the borders or by dragging the editing handles. We can also move the frame by clicking within the frame and dragging to move the frame to a new position. We cannot resize a frame or move it beyond the fine lines designating the margin.
We will resize the frame to a smaller size by dragging the upper left editing handle.
With the frame resized as desired we click within the frame and drag to move it.
We will drag the frame upwards to a new position.
Snapping: Bringing the borders of an alt-clicked frame near a margin or near the border of another frame will tend to snap to the margin or other border. This is a very subtle effect that occurs only when the frame borders being moved are very close to the margins or other borders.
We are happy with the new position of the frame but now we would like to change the viewport, to pan and zoom what the frame shows of the Mexico drawing. To do that, we double-click within the frame.
When a frame has been Alt-clicked into editing mode, we can end that either by clicking outside the frame, or by double-clicking into the frame to put it into pan / zoom mode.
Double-clicking within
a frame moves the focus of pan and zoom commands into that frame and draws
a thick border around the frame to indicate it now has the focus of pan
and zoom commands. For example, instead of the mouse wheel zooming
the entire layout window in or out, moving the mouse wheel will zoom only
the contents of the double-clicked frame.
Autozoom: When the size of the frame on our monitors is small, Manifold will automatically zoom into the frame in the layout so that when the layout has the focus for pan and zoom we can do sensible work with it. To go back to the previous view after panning and zooming within the frame, we can click outside the frame and then click the Back button on the main toolbar.
When a frame has been double-clicked into pan/zoom mode we can pan and zoom within the frame, as has been done above, to provide a closer view of the province of Durango within Mexico. All of the usual panning and zooming commands that would work for a map window will work within a frame that has been put into pan/zoom mode with a double-click. For example, we can right-click and drag to draw a zoom box within the frame.
Press Esc or Click anywhere outside of the frame to end the exclusive focus of pan and zoom commands within the frame. If we want to edit the frame's size and position, we can also exit pan/zoom mode by Alt-clicking the frame to put it into edit mode, or by Alt-clicking a different frame.
We have now added our first frame to the layout. It appears with a faint border to show the extents of the frame. Like the margin lines, the faint border appears only in the layout as a guide and will not appear when the layout is printed.
We click the Margins
button to turn off margins, to see what the layout will look like when
printed.
Layout frames by default are created without any border lines. We can easily add a border by alt-clicking the frame and then in the Style tab of the Info pane that pops open, changing the border color from the default transparent to whatever color we want. We can also change the thickness of the border line as well.
To continue on with this tutorial, we click
the Margins button to turn
margins back on. It is easier to work with frames when margin lines
show their boundaries.
So far, we have resized the frame and moved it into the desired position on the sheet of paper, and we have panned and zoomed the viewport within the frame to show that part of the Mexico drawing we want within the frame.
Next we will add another frame, also showing the same Mexico drawing.
We again drag and drop the Mexico drawing into the layout. As before, it appears as a new frame that fills the layout and is zoomed to fit.
The new frame appears as if it were a layer above the first frame that we added. The transparent background of the Mexico drawing allows frames below to show through where there are no objects in the Mexico drawing, just as if frames were layers in a map.
We Alt-click within the new frame to choose it for editing.
We drag editing handles to reduce the size of the second frame as desired.
We now double-click within the frame to move the pan and zoom focus exclusively into that frame. This will allow us to adjust the view the frame shows.
Shortcuts: When a frame is selected for editing with an Alt-click and we next want to move the focus into that frame for panning and zooming, we do not have to first click outside the frame to end editing mode. We can simply double-click into the frame and it will immediately switch from editing mode into panning and zooming the viewport mode. Likewise, if we have double-clicked a frame to put it into exclusive pan/zoom mode, if we want to switch to editing mode we can do that directly by Alt-clicking the frame.
When we double-click the frame a thicker border appears. We can then pan and zoom within the frame to zoom out a bit, providing a bit more white space around the drawing of Mexico.
We then Alt-click within the frame to pick it for editing, and to end the exclusive focus of pan and zoom commands within the frame.
When we Alt-click the frame, the Info pane shows style and position properties for that frame, as well as controls to turn on a Grid in the frame, along with a preview pane to show the grid.
We Alt-click outside the active frame, to turn off the blue border and editing handles.
We also click the Margins
button to turn off margins, to see what the layout will look like when
printed.
The print layout that contains two frames, both of which show the same drawing but with different views. One frame shows all of Mexico while the other frame shows a zoomed in view of the province of Durango. Both frames take their content from the same component, the Mexico drawing in the project, but they show that same component using different pan and zoom. The frame showing all of Mexico has a border and a background color, while the frame showing Durango has no border.
We an add a border to the frame showing Durango, as seen above. We have also added a background color, which we matched to the background color used in the other frame by using the color picker "eyedropper" tool to pick the other frame's background color when setting the background color for the Durango frame.
In the Layers pane, frames are just layers in the pane, and they can be move up and down in the display stack using standard moves in the Layers pane. If we like, we can move the Durango frame above the other frame by selecting it in the Layers pane and pressing the Move Up toolbar button.
Although this example shows two frames that both show the same drawing, we are not limited to only using the same drawing within a layout. We could add more frames by dragging and dropping maps, other drawings or images into the layout.
Whenever a layout is redrawn, the frames in the layout will be dynamically updated to automatically show any changes made in the components which frames show. For example, if we make changes to the Mexico drawing, then all frames that show the Mexico drawing in any of our layouts will automatically update when we turn layers on or off, or zoom or otherwise cause a redraw in the layers pane.
Suppose we open the Mexico drawing in its own window, as seen above.
Using the Style pane we can change the formatting of the drawing to use a different palette, and to draw areas with thinner border lines.
When next the layout is redisplayed, all frames that show the Mexico drawing will update to show the changes made.
If we want to force a redisplay, we can zoom into the layout and then press the Back button on the main menu to get back to our original view. We can also turn a layer on/off in the Layers pane, which is a simple double-click. Or, we can choose View - Refresh in the main menu.
Frames are created with transparent background color. To change colors, for example, to use blue, brown or green background color as seen in the illustrations above using France, Germany and Mexico, we Alt-click a frame to pop open the Info pane for that frame. In the Style tab we can change the background color.
Consider the illustration above, showing the layout at the very beginning of this topic. Using the Layers pane, we have turned off the background frame to simplify the display, and we have Alt-clicked onto the text frame containing the text Buildings from OSM Data. That launches the Info pane for the frame.
In the Info pane's Style tab we click on the Background color button and change the background color from black to blue. We then press Update Record to apply the change.
Until we press Update Record, if we would like to abandon changes made, such as changes in the background color, we can right-click into the layout window and choose Undo Changes (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Back). We can also commit changes by right-clicking into the layout window and choosing Save Changes (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Back).
Instantly, the background color used by the text frame changes from black to blue.
All properties of layouts are exposed in tables, which enable us to use SQL and programming to manipulate layouts. For example, changing the Page Setup changes the properties of the layout.
We can see the properties of a layout by right-clicking on the layout in the Project pane and choosing Properties, or by choosing View - Properties for an open layout window.
Like everything else in Manifold, we can reach the data for layouts in a table, with the properties available in the mfd_meta table as seen above (relevant records selected to emphasize them).
In addition to managing layouts with a point and click user interface, we can manage layouts with SQL and programming by manipulating the properties of a layout.
Consider a layout as seen above, where we have added a third frame that shows regions in France.
Opening the layout's Properties dialog, we can right-click onto the value of the property for Item.2 and choose Edit, to show the complete contents of that value. That shows us the data for that frame, the source of data, [France] and other information such as the Z order, with 0 being the uppermost frame in the stack of frames in the layout. The value is written in human-readable JSON style.
In the Properties dialog we can Ctrl-click the row for Item.2 to select it and then we can press the Delete button.
That deletes the item from the properties of the layout and also deletes any references to that property from the mfd_meta table.
The corresponding frame in the layout is also deleted.
Changing the values for Z for a frame in a layout's properties allows us to specify where in the display stack the frame should appear. Normally we do that interactively using the Layers pane, but for programmatic manipulation of layouts we can use the Z value in a layout's properties.
In the illustration above we have added a frame that contains a map with two layers, a drawing layer showing buildings in Monaco and an image layer showing the Bing Satellite image server imagery for Monaco. We have edited the Z value in the map frame's properties to be 2 and have changed one of the two Mexico frame Z property values to be 0 while leaving the other at 1. That specifies the map's frame will be drawn lower than the two frames showing Mexico.
See the Z Order discussion in the Layers Pane topic for examples.
When printing, images will be rendered to the full resolution available within the image. That can provide some astonishingly high resolution in the case of image server images which are brought in on demand.
For example, the above shows a PDF created from the layout which includes a map that has a Bing satellite image layer. The PDF supports high resolution so Manifold automatically brings in whatever tiles are required to utilize that high resolution.
If we zoom further in there is no apparent pixilation in the image, a result of the high resolution available for such images from the Bing server. The vector layer showing buildings is also razor sharp.
Most image servers, that is, raster images brought in from a web server such as Bing Satellite or Google Streets, cover the entire Earth. If such an image is zoomed to fit it displays the entire Earth, as in the illustration below at left.
The images above show a Print Preview of a map that contains two layers: a Bing Satellite image server layer to provide background context and a drawing layer showing buildings in Monaco. If we create a Print Preview of such a map, the map is shown in a frame within a layout with the map zoomed to fit. A zoom to fit zooms to the extent of the largest non-imageserver layer, so a zoom to fit using that map will zoom to the extents of the buildings layer. If we want to see the entire Earth as seen in the illustration at left above we must manually zoom farther out.
To zoom in and out within the frame, we double-click the frame to lock all pan and zoom motions to the frame and then we can use the usual mouse and toolbar zoom commands. For example, we can zoom in by using a Right-click and drag to zoom box into the desired view. We can also save a location using the map window outside of the layout, and then we can go to that location within the layout frame once we double-click into the frame.
For notes and examples for how to set the exact scale for a display in a layout frame, see the Status Bar - Scale topic.
Layout windows render drawings and labels at true scale, so that zooming in and out of the overall layout will make the entire layout, including the visual size of any symbology or layers that appear in various frames, seem larger or smaller as if we were getting closer or farther away from the virtual sheet of paper that the layout represents. That is a true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) effect. In addition, we can lock the scale within a frame by setting a Render scale value (similar to what Esri calls a reference scale) in the Layers pane for the component that appears within that frame. Render scale is very useful to create layouts that show their contents at exactly some desired scale.
For example, if we want a drawing or label to appear in a frame at exactly 1:20,000 scale, with the focus on the drawing or label window we can zoom exactly to 1:20,000 scale using the status bar scale readout and then compose the sizes and symbols to be used in the drawing or labels layers to appear the way we would like at that scale. We then use the Layers pane to specify a Render scale value of 1:20,000 for those layers, and we save a location for the approximate view that we intend to use.
We then drag and drop that component into the layout, adjust the frame size to what we want, and then we double-click into the layout and we choose the location saved to adjust the view to 1:20,000 scale with a view of approximately what we wanted. We pan the view to fine tune the composition we want. The result is a frame that shows our drawing or labels in exactly 1:20,000 scale, showing exactly the view we want.
Deletions are Confirmed - Deleting frames in a layout displays a confirmation dialog. The default button in the confirmation dialog is set to Cancel. If we do not want to see the confirmation dialog, we can check the Never show this again box. That will remove the confirmation dialog for deleting frames in layouts, for deleting objects in drawing layers, for deleting labels and for deleting records in tables. Another way to eliminate the confirmation dialog is to uncheck the Confirm deleting records box in the Tools - Options dialog. Frames in a layout are records in a system table, hence the "records" terminology.
Layouts are Fully Parallel - Layouts are not only dynamic, they are fully parallel. As parallel processes make changes to components those will be updated within any frames in which they appear in any layouts. For example, if we create a data source using some remote server that contains large vector drawings but the combination of a remote server and a slow connection requires a few minutes for the data for a really big drawing to make its way to our workstation, when we drag and drop that drawing into a layout we will see how the frame for that drawing becomes populated within the layout as data comes in from the remote server.
Rendering Engines - Tools - Options settings in Manifold control what rendering engine is used for display to the monitor. Layouts always use the Normal engine with all features such as antialiasing and transparency used to render frames.
Example: Layout Properties - Editing properties which appear in the mfd_meta table for a layout changes the content of that layout. We can exploit that effect to create standardized layouts which are then re-cycled for different content.