Color Fill - Grid Editor

The Color Fill object in the grid editor Contents window contains the grid editor color fill properties. Click the Color Fill object to change the grid node colors in the Properties window.

The visibility check box next to the Color Fill object is used to turn on or off the color fill display in the grid editor window. When the check box is checked, the grid editor displays a color relief map. When the command is not checked, the labels, nodes, and contours are displayed on a white background.

This image displays grid node symbols, labels, contour lines, and a color fill for a grid file.

Info Properties

An Info page is displayed in the Properties window when the Color Fill object is selected. See the Grid Info Properties help topic for more information on these common, information only, properties.

Grid Node Color Fill Properties

The Color Fill page is displayed in the Properties window when the Color Fill object is selected. Edit the fill opacity, color map, and interpolation option in the Properties window.

Edit color fill properties in the Properties window.

Opacity

Change the Opacity of the color fill by entering a value from 0% (completely transparent) to 100% (completely opaque). To change the opacity, highlight the existing value and type a new value. Press ENTER on the keyboard to make the change. Or, click and drag the to change the opacity percentage.

Fill Colors

The Fill colors property controls which color map is used to fill the grid editor window. To use a predefined colormap, click the current selection and select a colormap from the list. The default Fill colors is Terrain. To edit a colormap or create a custom colormap, click the button to open the Colormap Editor.

Interpolate Colors

The Interpolate colors check box activates color smoothing on the map. When checked, Interpolate colors uses bilinear interpolation to calculate colors on the map. Bilinear interpolation makes the color gradations smoother, but it can slightly slow the on-screen drawing of the grid editor.

When a dense grid (a grid with relatively large numbers of rows and columns) is used, little difference is seen between the final display whether the Interpolate colors option is checked or not. For dense grids, on-screen drawing time can be reduced when the Interpolate colors option is unchecked.

When a coarse grid (a grid with relatively few rows and columns) is used and the Interpolate colors option is not checked, all pixels within a single grid square are assigned the same color. This creates a grid-square map, and can result in an color fill with a very blocky appearance. For coarse grids, therefore, a smoother appearance results when the Interpolate colors check box is checked.