Symbols are graphic objects used in cartography to represent in a convencional manner, many types of activities, installations and warnings. In this work they are used also, to represent the institutionals logotypes.
Symbols can be graphic figures of varied complexity and, at first, there is no necessity for the chart generator to have a graphic editor able to create these symbols. Nowadays, there are on the market a lot of graphic packages with many abilities that can be used to create a library of cartographic symbols.
For this work, it has been decided to use to create this symbol library, the DXF standard (it is a standard created by AutoDesk, Inc., and describes the graphic drawing entities) and the BMP standard (24 bits). The choice of these standards is motivated by the ability that most graphic packages, that nowadays are offered on the market, have to export their drawings in these formats. This means, that the symbols can be created in any graphic package able to generate drawing files on the DXF and BMP formats.
NOTE: The user can add symbols to the SPRING library, only copying the files (DXF format) to the directory /etc/chart/symbol and (BMP format) to the directory /etc/chart/bitmaps, that can be found on the directory where the system is installed.
Inserting a Symbol on the Chart:
IMPORTANT: A text or a symbol (see next) can be inserted on the chart as an element of the whole chart (data area + paper area) or as an element restricted to the data area, and on the latter case can be inserted in plane or geographic coordinates (further details on Elements Location Control).
Updating a Symbol:
NOTE: It is not possible to perform a BMP Symbol rotation.
Removing a Symbol:
NOTE: Clicking on the remove button removes all the selected elements from the chart.
See also:
How to edit the characteristics of the Symbols.
How to contrl the localization of the Elements