Demonstration Video

Surfer 9 - Part 10
Add Drawing Objects to Base Map
PART 10
1. Introduction
2. Add Drawing Objects to be Moved and Scaled with the Map
3. Exporting Drawn Objects in Map Units

1. Welcome to Golden Software’s demonstration video for Surfer 9 – Part 10. In this demonstration I’ll
be covering the topic of drawing objects to be moved and scaled with the map, an exporting drawn
objects in map units.

2. A common request for Surfer users is to draw items on a map (such as text annotations or additional
lines or polygons) and have the items become part of the map, to be moved and scaled when the
map is moved and scaled. I’ll start this example by opening the Post SRF file, located in the Surfer
Samples folder. I’ll go to File | Open, select the file and click Open.

a. To start drawing objects as part of the map, right click over the existing map and go to Add |
Empty Base Layer. That will add an empty base map layer, called Base, to your map. You
can see this in the Object Manager.

b. I’ll expand the base group by clicking the + button to the left. You can see that there is
nothing under the base layer group, so that it is empty.

c. To start adding items to this base layer group, right click over Base and go to Enter Group.
You are now "inside" the base layer group.

d. Next, go to the Draw menu and select the type of object you wish to create. I will select to
create a text object. Click on the map where you want the text located, type the text and click
OK.

e. I will go back to the Draw menu and select to create a polyline. Click on the map, hold the
mouse button down, draw the polyline, and double click to finish the polyline. You can create
as many objects as you wish. Each object will be added to the base map layer, which you
can see in the Object Manager.

f. When you are done drawing objects, press the Esc key on the keyboard to exit draw mode.

g. Right click over Base in the Object Manager and go to Exit Group to exit the base layer
group.

h. You can double click on any of the base map objects you just created to edit their properties.
For example, I’ll double click on this polyline and change the color to blue, and click OK. You
can see that the polyline color is now blue.

i. Now when you move, limit or rescale the map, the drawn objects will be moved, shifted and
rescaled accordingly. For example, I’ll move the map to the left, and the objects I drew are
moved with it. I’ll double click on Map in the Object Manager, go to the Scale tab, change
the scale and click OK. The objects I drew resized with the map.

I’ll go back to the blank plot window for my next demonstration.

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3. Surfer 9 also allows you to draw objects on top of a map and export them to a vector file in map units.
This makes it easy to export your custom drawn objects to a file for use in other programs or in other
ways in Surfer. For example, you could:
• draw a polygon on top of a contour map and export that polygon to a BLN file to use to blank
the grid file.
• draw a polyline on top of your map and export it to a BLN file for use as a fault file or to slice
a grid file.
• draw text, polyline, symbol, and polygon objects over your map and export to a vector file for
use in AutoCAD, ArcGIS or another software program.

In this example, I will draw a polygon representing a fictitious field area over a contour map, and
export it to a BLN file.

a. The first step is to create my contour map. I’ll go to Map | New | Contour Map, select my grid
file and click Open.

b. Right click over Contours in the Object Manager and go to Add | Empty Base Layer. That
will add an empty base map layer, called Base, to your map. I can see there are no objects in
this base layer by clicking on the + button to expand the group. There is nothing to expand, it
is empty.

c. To start adding objects to the empty base layer, right click over the layer in the Object
Manager and go to Enter Group. You are now "inside" the base layer group.

d. You can start adding objects to the base layer group. To draw your field area, go to Draw |
Polygon. Hold the mouse button down and draw the polygon over the map. Double click
when you are finished to close the polygon. Now the base layer group has one polygon
object in it, which you can see in the Object Manager.

e. Press the Esc key on the keyboard to exit drawing mode.

f. You can add more objects if you wish. If that’s all you want to add, right click over the Base
layer in the Object Manager and go to Exit Group.

g. So we can see the polygon a little better over the contour map, I will change its properties.
Double click on the polygon to edit the properties. I’ll change the Foreground color to blue,
and the Opacity to 50%, which means to make the color 50% transparent. Click OK and the
changes are applied.

h. Now that the polygon is created and added to the Base layer, we can export the objects to a
new file. Uncheck the check boxes to the left of the four axes and any other map layers (like
the Contours layer) in the Object Manager. That will make them invisible in the plot window,
so that only the drawn polygon remains.

i. Go to File | Export.

j. In the Export dialog, choose a location to save the file. I’ll save the file back to the Surfer 9
Samples folder. Give the file a name, and choose a format to save the file in. For example, I’ll
choose to save the drawn polygon as BLN Golden Software Blanking (*.bln). This is a good
format to choose if you want to use the exported file as a base map in other projects, if you
want to use the file as a fault or breakline file when gridding, or if you want to use the file to
blank a grid file.

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 k. Click Save and the Export Options dialog appears. Note that the File Rectangle coordinates
are in map units and are different from the Page Rectangle coordinates. Click OK and the file
is created.

This concludes my demonstration of adding drawn objects to a map and exporting them in map units
in Surfer 9.