Weather Routing

[rgleason]

Entered to tracker.
FS#2001 : ADD -check if line segment passes through a boundary - ext PI communication

[rgleason]

Boundaries are created with Ocpn_draw. Weather_routing has been modified to check for boundaries as a test, because they could be useful.

How exactly does one create a boundary? I have not found in the User Manual any information on doing that. When I am using weather routing it dies whenever it gets near any land.

[NAV]

The following strings of the window 'Weather Routing Settings' still are only visible in English:
Start Time
End Time
State
Avg Speed
Max Speed
Avg Speed Ground
Max Speed Ground
Avg Wind
Max Wind
Avg Current
Max Current
Avg Swell
Max Swell
Upwind Percentage
Port Starboard
Tacks
(BoatFileName)


Further:
What is the meaning of InvRoutes: Inverted routes or Invalid routes?

[seandepagnier]

inverted routes

[Gilletarom]

Hello Sean d'Epagnier,

What do you mean by "Inverted regions" ? Is it "Bypass area" or other ?

Thank by advance.

Gilletarom.

[Gilletarom]

Hello Sean d'Epagnier,

Originally Posted by NAV

The following strings of the window 'Weather Routing Settings' still are only visible in English:
Start Time
End Time
State
Avg Speed
....
Tacks
(BoatFileName) ....

Hum .... NO. In french, all items of Nav list are translate correctly.

The only one item that remain in english is :
"Polar computation saliboat transform settings".

But,it is in English because I do not undestand what it mean. So I do not try to translate it.

can you help me ?

Thank by advance. Gilletarom

[NAV]

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

Hum .... NO. In french, all items of Nav list are translate correctly.

Attached picture shows what I see using the Dutch language file (plugin version 1.82.1, from from opencpn.org).

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by Gilletarom

Hello Sean d'Epagnier,


Hum .... NO. In french, all items of Nav list are translate correctly.

The only one item that remain in english is :
"Polar computation saliboat transform settings".

But,it is in English because I do not undestand what it mean. So I do not try to translate it.

can you help me ?

Thank by advance. Gilletarom

Don't bother, this string will cease to exist in the next version.

[Gilletarom]

Hello NAV, Hello Sean d'Epagnier,

Originally Posted by NAV

Attached picture shows what I see using the Dutch language file (plugin version 1.82.1, from from opencpn.org).

yes NAV is right ... Also in french these items are in English. VAV , I apologize ... Pfuuuuu Gilletarom ....

[Taarnskov]

I have been using weather routing extensively during my pasage down along the European cost, Across the Atlantic and lately across the Caribien sea. I have found it very useful, but are missing a column where maximum gust for a route can be found, if available in the grib file. Gust are available in many grib files.

[rgleason]

Taarnskov,

Could you post a couple of screenshots of the Weather_routing plugin showing how the menus are formatted on your machine now (with version 4.2 OpenCPN?).

I would like to compare to how it is formatted on my setup. I find several areas of the menus still poorly configured .

[Taarnskov]

Gleason,

have attached a screen dump which i hope covers what you asked for. Let me know if you need another screen dump.

Regards, Lars

[rgleason]

WxRt01-1st-menu-good
This first menu is working well now, better than before. It has two way resize freedom and it remembers the last sizing provided that OpenCPN is not closed. There is adequate room for all field values. This is all good. The only thing I would change is to make the menu come up initially so that the value area in the fields is adequate to show normal data such that the menu does not oes not have to be resized each time OpenCPN is started and WxRoute is used. Otherwise we will be resizing this menu every new session of using Weather routing. Either that or save the menu sizes between Opencpn sessions. I think it needs to save the "Postions" right column width and spreadsheet field widths, and the spreadsheet field widths of the left main column "Configurations"


WxRt02-Config-common
Better than before, but "Courses (relative to true wind)"
"From" [should have space for at least 3 digits] "To"[should have space for at least 3 digits] and "By" {space for at least 2 digits}
on the right "Time Step" Provide at least two spaces for H, M, & Step
Options - Basic and Options - Advanced are OK.
Under "Bpat" path "C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_routing\Bo at.xml" This whole path is not seen because the path is too long to show, and it is most important to see and understand which file is being used. I think it should be divided up into two lines for the Path and the Name probably.
Path:C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_routin g\ -This should be a wide field and could be the full path and name.
Name: Boat.xml [Just make the file name appear] Then have the [...} to Browse and select then {Edit} to edit the Boat settings.
Constraints Common is good as is the rest of this menu.


WxRt03-Config-Additional
WxRt04-Config-Cyclones
Both are good.

WxRt05-Config-Edit
This screen needs to come up properly sized. One good thing is that the menu can be adjusted in both directions, however the last size is not remembered after the menu is closed, or after opencpn is closed and a new session started. We will be resizing this forever, each time we use the plugin.
Under "Sail Plan" (when I have adjusted the menu size) and select "New" Sail Plan, the menu jumps back to the original messed up size with a few messed up titles showing double, Should not happen.

xRt06-Config-Edit-Plot
Under "Plot" Tab the selection of Polar, Speed and VMG seems to work well and the fields below adjust and work.
Under "Plot" "Polar" "Wind knots" - Under Wind Knots there is not enough space. There shold be room for at least two digits.
There should be an ability to drag the horizontal between the top half below the Polar diagram and the bottom half, to enable making the polar smaller, to take up less space and to shorten the Sail Plan length.
Also there should be an ability to drag to widen the "Sail Plans" area so the "Name can be made wider"

WxRt07-Config-Edit-Boat-Conf
Under "Hull Type" I laughed at the choice "Submarine"
The four parameters below that need more space, probably at least 3 digits and sail area needs at least 4 digits.
Displacement, Sail Area, LWL, LOA, BEam should have at least room for 4 digits. Additionally LWL,LOA, Beam should permit two decimal place entry eg: 45.25 ft
I also think the foot units should be a choice of meters or feet.

WxRt08-Config-Edit-Sail-Plan
Under dropdown "Computed from Sailboat Transform" Drag Frictional and Wake need at least 3 digits.
I still wonder that this means "Computed from Sailboat Transform" - I think this needs explanation to everybody, what "Transform"?
Max Pointing Angle Apparent Wind needs at least 2-3 digits. Wing and Wing Running checkbox and "Save as CSV" could all be in the same line?
We really need to be able to shrink the polar file so it is smaller by dragging a horizontal bar.
We need to be able to drag the bottom down to see all the menus without having the polar get bigger proportionally. (Just an idea)
Under dropdown "Computed from IMF" This is ok.
Under dropdown "From File" The screen pops up looking for a file. The user will not really know what is going on because no polar files are provided under
C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_routing . So I make a new subdirectory called Polars C:\ProgramData\opencpn\plugins\weather_routing\Pol ars
and copied a bunch of them in there to use. Once the Browse is pointed the that directory that is what is used, which is good.

I am now trying to understand why only one windspeed is shown for a polar file. Normally there are many. It must have something to do with making sail plans, but we no longer can enter wind ranges for each sail plan. (This seems to be happening in Switch Sail Plan tab now) Something is missing here and it is not finished and working as far as I can determine!

Also whenever I try to save a new Sail Plan, not knowing what I am doing of course, the whole menu immediately shrinks back to the original opening size. This should not happen.
Also it has to becomen clearer to the user how these Sail Plans are to be used. And it should be provem to work.
I think they would be very good, and I saw something more complete than this earlier, that did work.


WxRt09-Config-Edit-VMG
This tab seems to work and the value fieleds are ok.

WxRt10-Config-Edit-SwitchPlan
I have been able to create an initial and new sail plans where the plan changes when
wind >2
wind >7
wind .12
etc

I am not sure how the Sail Plans selected are created, so I have no idea if this works. There are lots of constraint choices and how this gets connected to a sail plan needs to become clearer to me. I have not gotten it working using a VDR file yet.
What I note is that the menu shrinks immediately when we go into Sail Plans..

WxRt-Config-Edit-Sail Plan -Delete -SailPlan-at-up-left
Also when a sail plan is deleted, Opencpn seems to freeze up.


Every time the plugin has changed it has improved, and I am sure with a little more understanding by the user and some more explicit user interface improvements it will get easier to use these advanced features. I think we will also need to improve the manual for these areas because the user is not likely to grasp everything right away. We will need to do a step by step example of setting up a sail plan, then switching the plan and setting up the many parameters.

I think the relationships of the various tabs needs to be explained.
xRt06-Config-Edit-Plot
WxRt07-Config-Edit-Boat-Conf
"Computed from Sailboat Transform"
"Computed from IMF
"from File"
WxRt08-Config-Edit-Sail-Plan
WxRt09-Config-Edit-VMG
WxRt10-Config-Edit-SwitchPlan
WxRt-Config-Edit-Sail Plan

[rgleason]

Improving Menu Formats in Weather-Routing_pi

This is a word doc with the Images included. It is a specific list of improvements.

The file is too big to zip and change to pdf, so it should be downloaded from

OpenCPN Beta File Thingie rguser, rgpass

WxRt-Menus-Review.docx.pdf Please remove the pdf.

The file is in the main directory and the SHA256 is
SHA256: d10a1420b5ceb2b689dd591113d9d22a3a8c5629e5879ace47 ea0408a3d1cf5c
File name: WxRt-Menus-Review.docx.pdf
Detection ratio: 0 / 56
Analysis date: 2016-03-22 22:08:50 UTC ( 0 minutes ago )

[rgleason]

Pavel, I could not open an issue under your fork, so instead this Issue will be found under Sean's github for weather_routing.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2078855