What's New – Simplified path features

Feb 28, 2024

Since the very beginnings of SCALGO Live, it was possible to modify the terrain model to see how this influences the flow of water and the various analyses.

The first tools were quite simple, and allowed you to draw walls, depressions, or protrusions with vertical walls only. Then came side slopes for more realistic dams and basins, the possibility to specify the cross section (for instance to represent a river bed according to actual measurements), and most recently the ability to create a terrain by drawing contour lines.

Until now, when you draw a path feature using the "interpolate", "raise", or "raise flat" tools without any side slopes, it was still represented in the terrain as we implemented it in the first version many years ago (top figure below).

We have now changed it so that when you create a simple path without side slopes or general cross sections, it is added to the terrain using the same method that we use for general paths (that is, for paths with side slopes or cross sections). As you can see in the bottom figure, this avoids the traditional plateaus at each vertex, and in general fits better with the other ways of using our tools.


(top) Old path style with rounded edges and discontinuities at joints. (bottom) New default path style.

It is worth noting that the new method is applied only to newly created features - your existing features remain unchanged. If you want an existing path feature to use the new method, use "Edit both cross sections" from the context menu, select "Width only", and save again. Note that you will not be able to go back to the traditional way, though.