Map Styles Manual

This guide was written by Training Director, Zach Carlson. To schedule training with our team, click here.

The Map Styles Editor allows you to customize your job design with connections, nodes, and sections that appear on your project map.

The editor is located within Job Settings, which can be accessed by clicking the gear icon next to your job name.

Under the three-dot menu in the top right, you can click on the paint can icon ("Map Styles") button. This will open a pop-out window to edit the styles for your connections, nodes, and sections.

If we start with the "Connections" tab, you can see that on the left hand side, you can move the style around with the arrow grab handles to change the order. Order is very important within the editor, as it determines the priority for how styles will be displayed on your map. If multiple map style conditions are true for a location (i.e. node type = pole is true, and flag for review = true), then whichever map style rule is highest will display on the map. See more on order/priority later in this guide.

Using the gear, you can change the settings of your map style rules.

Within this window, you can change the line thickness, set a solid or dashed line, and select an icon to exist along the line.

The line icon will be an icon that is fixed on the connection itself. Using the “More” button, you can look for different symbols to use. You can use the Icon Scale text line to change the size of the icon along the line and also have the icon be a different color if needed. Clicking the “X” at the top will close out the line settings window.

Returning back to the main Map Styles Editor, the Color square can be used to set custom colors for your connections, nodes, or sections. You can use the tools to adjust hue and saturation, or you can manually enter the RGB values to get a known color.

To the right of these settings, you can define what the symbol will represent on the map. In the above example, the green line represents an aerial connection. You can use the three dot menu to the far right to delete, duplicate, or add a new style below.

Clicking the “Add a New Style” button at the top will place a new style at the top of the list. Again, you can use the arrows to move the style, the gear icon, to edit the line settings, and the color square to change the color. You will also need to define what style you want to represent.

The first dropdown is the attribute. Use this dropdown to set the attribute that will be used for the style. The next dropdown is the comparator. You can choose between equals, does not have, has, or does not equal.

If you choose equals or does not equal, you can define what that should be based on how the attribute is set up in the model editor. If it is a picklist, you will see the options of the picklist, if it is a checkbox you will see the check box, and if it is a text area or text box, you will see the line for the text.

Example

If you needed to make a new style for an Underground Cable, you would first want to make sure that "underground cable" is an existing picklist value under the attribute "Connection Type." You can do this using the Model Editor.

*See the Model Editor manual for help adding or editing attributes

Once you have your attributes and picklist values properly configured and saved in the Model Editor, you can click the “Add New Style” button.

Use the line settings to adjust the thickness and style. For the attribute, choose "connection type." For comparator, we want the connection type to be underground cable, so select "equals" for the second dropdown, and find "underground cable" in the picklist that appears.

Once the style is created, go to the top right of the window to select the three dot menu to Save the style template.

You can save the template as an existing template to overwrite it, or you can save it as a new template. Check the default box if you want the template to be the default for all new jobs you create. Once the template is selected or named, click “Save.”

*Changing an existing template or making a new style template the default will not update past jobs. Only new jobs created will use the template if it is selected for default. You will need to load the new default styles in existing jobs.

Nodes and Sections

For Nodes and Sections, there are a few more icon options. Additionally, order generally plays a more important role.

You can click on the icon to see various options for map symbology. Clicking “More” will give you a bigger list to choose from. To choose an icon, just click on the one you want to use.

Clicking the “T” button will allow you to change the icon size. The bigger the number the larger the icon will appear on the map.

Again, you will need to select an attribute and comparator to finish setting up the style rule, and you can use the arrows to move the style within the list.

Order

Order matters when multiple attributes exist for a node on the map—especially if each attribute has a style rule.

In the above example, if a pole is placed on the map with no attributes other than "node type" being set to "pole," it will appear as a black circle. If you would add the "done" attribute to the location and leave it unchecked, it will turn into a red circle. Then if the pole is collected in the field, it would update to be a blue hexagon. Finally, if you check the "done" attribute checkbox, it would turn to a green circle.

Even though the location still has the "node type" and "field completed" attributes, the "done = true" map style is highest in this list, so that is the style that is displayed on the map. When everything is set in the Map Styles Editor, go to the three dot menu at the top right to save the template. Then click the “Done” button at the bottom right of the window.

Additional Notes

• If you return to older jobs that were created before a style or template was created, you can go into the Map Style Editor window, and in the three dot menu at the top right select “Load Style Template” to load the newly created template for that job.

• You can edit and create custom logic for map styles to add even more specific details to the map.

• Pink lines for connections and pink circles for nodes are used for default styles. If you see these on the map where you did not intend for them, it just means a style is not yet created. You can go into the editor to create the style, and once saved, the line or node will update to represent your desired look.

Thanks for reading! Contact us at support@katapultengineering.com with any questions. For a more visual guide of the Map Styles Editor, keep an eye out for our upcoming Map Styles Editor Webinar.