Is there a way to plot systems?

What I mean by this seemingly noob question is this:

I run EVNEW, and to put a system I have to type the coordinates. No big deal, right? Well the coordinate plane that I've noticed Nova running is kinda... backwards, making it hard for me to place systems. Normally I wouldn't mind, but try making up an entire galaxy like this, guess and check after each change. My question is this: Is there some way to have a map of the universe you've made so far, and just click where you want it to be and it'll show you the coordinates?

A long time ago I made a map, put it in photoshop and moused over each system to get the coordinates.

Cham

@zapp, on Apr 17 2007, 10:08 PM, said in Is there a way to plot systems?:

Normally I wouldn't mind, but try making up an entire galaxy like this, guess and check after each change.

I don't need to try. I did it, 200+ systems.

But then, I wasn't really guessing. Just settle on an average distance you want to have between systems and with a little trigonometry the numbers aren't too hard to calculate. If you're doing a whole load of systems in a batch, you can always draw them up on graph paper in advance. The coordinate system is inverted from what you might initially expect, but it's easy to get used to.

Actually only the Y coordinates are inverted. And as for plotting the systems, my advice would be to make educated guesses (I did for over thirty systems in my plug-in). Unless you can get an entire Nova-verse map into Photoshop (or something similar) like Cham did and check the coordinates that way.

Of course if you have a Mac this is no problem. Mission Computer has graphical system editing.

There have been several apps with graphical placement.

But they're all for Macs. PC's don't have any programs that let you click and place systems on the map (EVNEW could use an update ).

EVN Cartographer is what I use. It has about a 500-600 system limit though. After that the graphical interface gets unstable.

Yeah I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have less that 500-600.

Quote

with a little trigonometry the numbers aren't too hard to calculate

I'm in 9th grade algebra.

The coordinates are not "backwards", per se, they are just coming from the QuickDraw (the legacy Mac drawing engine) coordinate system, which starts at the top left corner at 0,0 and goes down and right from there with positive coordinates, hence more X is right and more Y is down. For a window drawing coordinate system this is better, as when you redimension the window with the bottom right corner (the usual method) and coordinates keep their value, stuff stays at the same position (relative to the top left corner); in fact, Quartz (the new OSX drawing engine) uses Cartesian coordinates, but when used with HIViews a transform is applied so that aplications draw in a coordinate system like QuickDraw.

It sure is different from Cartesian coordinates (start with 0,0 at the bottom left corner, then go up and right when coordinates increase), but makes sense once you're used to it.

You know, I think I'm gonna get my mac from my dad's house, fire up MissionComputer, plot it there, then convert it to windows and do the rest in EVNEW.

For what it's worth, Zacha Pedro, almost all 2D computer coordinate systems have (0, 0) in the upper left; it's by no means unique to QuickDraw. That just happens to be why EV, in particular, has that coordinate system.

I'm curious, Peter. How exactly would you apply trigonometry to the purposes of mapping? I think that I see the basic principles, but I'm not certain.

Maybe if you wanted system A a certain distance from system B but at some funny angle.

@aelran, on Apr 23 2007, 08:35 AM, said in Is there a way to plot systems?:

I'm curious, Peter. How exactly would you apply trigonometry to the purposes of mapping? I think that I see the basic principles, but I'm not certain.

It's nothing sophisticated. Let's say you've decided that the average distance between systems should be 15. But you don't want a grid of systems so they'll usually be at irregular angles to each other. Some rough mental trigonometry ensures that you get the right x- and y-axis adjustments to maintain the same average distance between systems. (In theory. In practice, the Override map is a bit patchy, with areas where the average distance between systems becomes much larger, chiefly because it became necessary to fit the 'Crescent' around the initially completed, denser groups of systems.)

The calculator got more of a work-out when doing things like positioning five fins evenly round a ship design though.

Edit: Incidentally, if I were starting over, I would draw it all up on graph paper first.

This post has been edited by pac : 23 April 2007 - 09:38 AM

Though it wouldn't show the links, I suspect that you could get Excel to do a scatter plot showing all your system locations. Failing that, I'd bet there's a freeware PC graphing program out there somewhere that would allow you to flip axes and do live updates of the graph as you edited coordinates.

@pac, on Apr 24 2007, 02:37 AM, said in Is there a way to plot systems?:

It's nothing sophisticated. Let's say you've decided that the average distance between systems should be 15. But you don't want a grid of systems so they'll usually be at irregular angles to each other. Some rough mental trigonometry ensures that you get the right x- and y-axis adjustments to maintain the same average distance between systems. (In theory. In practice, the Override map is a bit patchy, with areas where the average distance between systems becomes much larger, chiefly because it became necessary to fit the 'Crescent' around the initially completed, denser groups of systems.)

I thought it would be something along those lines. Thanks for the response, and I'm impressed at the time that would probably have taken.

I rather like the way the Crescent is a bit apart from the human systems and the Miranu. It made for some fun exploration options.