Shift-click & Profile tool?

[brian.r.hamilton]

I thought it was once possible to shift-click to add up a bunch of sections of trail with the Profile tool.  Is this my imagination or is this feature gone now?  I'm running version 3.8 & have blindly updated the past few versions without using many of the tools along the way.  I see I can accomplish the same thing by creating a new track using the Merge tool, but this isn't as convenient when just messing around planning rides for example.  Besides, shift-click to combine stuff is pretty much a Windows standard - makes sense to me!

[ScottMorris]

Yeah, the functionality was split out into the merge tool instead.  It wasn't very intuitive for some people to have to shift click, though it does make sense to me.

I guess there isn't too much harm in allowing shift merging with the profile tool, but it's not that much harder to just grab the merge tool instead.

Maybe you can explain a bit more what you mean by "I see I can accomplish the same thing by creating a new track using the Merge tool, but this isn't as convenient when just messing around planning rides for example."


I'd consider adding it back, for sure.

[brian.r.hamilton]

With the old Profile Tool, I could see the profile as I added trail segments.  Now there is the additional step of saving a temporary file with the route-under-consideration before you can profile it.  This results in Untitled files all over the place as I put together a plan.  I realize everyone organizes their trail data differently & this could probably be avoided to a degree, but there will always be at least one temp file because you can't overwrite a file you already have open.  Hope that's clear.

It makes perfect sense to me to view trail segments as the key objects in TF that are operated on with all the standard Windows keystrokes whenever possible.  What makes the most sense is always debatable I guess.  I just hate using & cleaning up little temp files because you always worry about deleting something important by accident.

Another thing that might be handy would be to add another option to the right-click of the Merge Tool to add elevation data to tracks without it (like in Climbing Analysis).  Sometimes as I'm piecing together a route, I find that some segments have elevation data & some don't.

[ScottMorris]

With the Merge tool the profile window still comes up and shows your current 'work in progress'.  Is it not coming up for you?  Some people argued to not have the profile come up, but I find it very useful to see if I'm merging things correctly.

That would be handy to be able to add elevation to the currently in process merged track.  I do suspect, however, that this is less of an issue now that every drawn track is automatically assigned elevation as it goes.  Maybe?

The feedback is always appreciated, thanks.

[brian.r.hamilton]

Sorry, I should have messed around with it more.  Trying to do too many things at the same time around here.    Sometimes TF or maybe just my computer gets flakey after it goes into one of those lower power states.  I restarted & it seems to be working fine now!  FWIW, when it was apparently messed up, the Pan Map Tool icon wasn't working.  The icon displayed was always for the last tool I had selected but the Pan Map Tool did work properly.  Strange.  I'm way overdue for a whole system wipe & re-install.

I have quite a few GPX files with no elevation data & others that do have good elevation data (like ones I collected myself).  I often put together a route including segments from both files but don't realize the elevation data is missing until I've already shift-clicked (or merged now ) much of my route.  At that point, I can continue & add elevation data later, but that wipes out what might be better data from the more complete GPX files.  The other option is to stop & add the elevation data to the sections that are missing, saving temp files, then routing again.  Seems like having it handy as an option for the Merge Tool could simplify this a little.  Maybe there are better ways.  I've been away from this stuff for a while, not doing as much exploring as usual.