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  • 1.  MapInfo Monday: Setting Styles for New Features

    Employee
    Posted 02-13-2023 03:27

    Happy #MapInfoMonday, 

    Today we will look at how you can set the style for new objects when drawing these via the drawing tools in MapInfo Pro.

    MapInfo Pro has the concept of a current style. This is the style that MapInfo Pro currently uses when you draw a new spatial object on the map. There is a current style for point, linear, closed, and textual objects. Before drawing a new spatial object, you should consider changing the current style to the style you want for your new object. This is useful if you are drawing many objects using this style. Alternatively, you can change the style of the spatial object after having drawn it.

    You can also set a style to be used when drawing a new spatial object for a specific layer/table.

    Setting a Style for a New Spatial Object

    When you are creating a new spatial object by drawing it using one of the built-in drawing tools in MapInfo Pro, the object will be styled using the current style for this object type.

    Before drawing the object, you can change the current style to the style you want to apply to the object.

    From the Style dropdown on the Spatial tab, I select Line Style so that I can change the current line style.

    In the Line Style dialog, I can now configure the line style I want to use for my new line feature.

    Make sure that you haven't selected a record before accessing the Line Style dialog. If you do, you might end up changing the style of the selected feature if it has been selected from the editable layer.

    And the polyline I now draw along Pebber Lane will use this line style.

    You can also select one or more objects from the editable layer and change the style of these objects via the same control as you set the current style. Note that if the selected objects don't have the exact same style, you may see the word "Mixed" in some of the style elements in the Line Style dialog. Below you can see that the objects don't have the same Width.

    Change the style to your desired style and hit OK. The selected style will now get applied to the objects.

    Styles for New Objects

    If you know that the objects in a layer all should be created with the same style, you can set this for the layer and let MapInfo Pro handle this for you. This makes it easier to switch between inserting objects into different layers as you won't have to worry about the style.
    Right-click on the editable layer and select Layer Properties from the context menu. It is important that the layer is editable. You can also access the Layer Properties dialog by double-clicking on the layer.
    In the Layer Properties dialog, you can now click on the Styles for New Object... button. This button is only accessible if the layer is editable.
    From the Insert Style dialog, you can now set the style for the objects you draw in this layer. The style types shown depend on the object types in the layer. You will therefore have to at least insert one object into the table and save the changes before accessing this dialog.
    When you click on OK in this dialog, the chosen styles will get saved to the metadata section of the tab file.
    And when you now draw new objects into this table/layer, the current style will be ignored and the style set in the Insert Style dialog for the layer will be used instead.
    You can also set a layer override style for your layer or use an individual theme to control the style based on an attribute. I'll discuss the second option in an upcoming article.


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    Peter Horsbøll Møller
    Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
    Precisely | Trust in Data
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  • 2.  RE: MapInfo Monday: Setting Styles for New Features

    Posted 02-20-2023 17:20

    Thanks Peter. That's useful for someone like me adapting to MapInfo. Something that I thought would be handy is the ability to set styles based on a field value. If you have a thematic layer this works but not in the source table. In my role I've inherited a number of datasets where the styles have been set according to the feature type e.g. stormwater node types. When I'm adding or editing the features I need to apply the style for each type. I can do this by a selection and update collectively or if I'm correct have a layer for each type and set the style there. Let me know if I've missed something.

    Mark McGovern

    Technical Officer - GIS

    Meander Valley Council



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    Mark McGovern
    Knowledge Community Shared Account
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  • 3.  RE: MapInfo Monday: Setting Styles for New Features

    Employee
    Posted 02-21-2023 02:12

    Hi Mark

    Good question!

    Yeah, the Insert Style option is really only good for a table where all objects have the same style. If your table holds objects of different types shown with different styles, I'd suggest using a thematic for the layer instead.

    You can even save this theme with the table and have it applied whenever you open the table, see Default Theme for Table.

    If you want to "save" the thematic style to the individual objects which isn't an uncommon request, you can use the tool HardCodedThematics which will take the style from the thematic and apply it to the objects. If this is of interest to you, I'll try to dig out the tool.



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    Peter Horsbøll Møller
    Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
    Precisely | Trust in Data
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: MapInfo Monday: Setting Styles for New Features

    Posted 02-22-2023 19:27

    Thanks Peter. The default theme option may be the way to go in the future.

    I'm curious to know what is best or most common practice for this i.e. saving individual styles in the table or saving as a single style and using a thematic layer to display the individual values as required.

    Mark



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    Mark McGovern
    Knowledge Community Shared Account
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  • 5.  RE: MapInfo Monday: Setting Styles for New Features

    Employee
    Posted 02-24-2023 04:43

    Hi Mark

    Personally, I like the option to set a global style for my layers as I can see that style in the Layer List as a sort of legend for my map.

    The same goes for creating an individual theme for my layer. The Layer List now shows these categories and allows me to turn on/off the individual values. This gives me an easy way to focus on only certain elements from the layer, like a kind of layer filter.

    But I really use all the options; global style, individual theme, and styles from the individual objects.

    If you use workspaces, they all work fine. If you tend to open up the tables individually, the last two have the benefit of being able to store the preferred display. The global style can only be stored in a workspace at the moment as we don't store layer settings in general with the tables.



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    Peter Horsbøll Møller
    Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
    Precisely | Trust in Data
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: MapInfo Monday: Setting Styles for New Features

    Employee
    Posted 02-27-2023 03:28

    H Mark

    I wrote a #MapInfoMonday article on using an individual theme for styling a layer. You can find it here: MapInfo Monday: Styling a Layer through an Individual Theme

    Let me know if this raises any questions



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    Peter Horsbøll Møller
    Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
    Precisely | Trust in Data
    ------------------------------