Issue 60

How to Set the View, Scale and Limits in Surfer 9

Surfer 9 has changed the location of a few commands. This was done to more accurately reflect what the command does and to make editing maps easier. This article details two specific changes in the program. This is a discussion of setting the map view, scale and limits.

Regardless of how your maps are created and overlaid, you may need to change the map view, scale and limits. The view changes the rotation and tilt of the map, and the scale and limits determine the size and extents of the map. In previous versions of Surfer, you would double click on the map and the View, Scale, and Limits pages were displayed with the other properties specific to that map layer type. 

In Surfer 9, these general pages have been moved to the Map Properties dialog since they are properties of the map frame itself, not of the individual map layers. To access Map Properties, double click on Map in the Object Manager.

Double click on Map in the 
Object Manager to open the 
Map Properties dialog

View
The View page allows you to change the Field of View, Rotation, Tilt and Projection of a map. You can display your map at any orientation so you can clearly see all your data.

Rotate and change the viewing angle of a map using the properties on the View page.

Scale
To change the map scale, go to the Scale page in the Map Properties dialog. Changing the X Scale and Y Scale values changes the relative size of the map. Changing the Length changes the absolute size of the map. The two values are connected, so changing one changes the other (ie. changing the X Scale changes the Length, and vice versa).

The Proportional XY Scaling check box ensures that the X and Y dimensions are scaled equally. When the check box is checked, a change in either the X or Y dimension is reflected in the other dimension by a proportional amount. To scale the axes independently, uncheck the check box.

Note: Sizing a map by selecting it and dragging the selection handles does not rescale the map internally; it just resizes the map on the screen. This will result in an incorrect scale. If you resize a map by dragging its edges or corners, you can return to the proper scale using the Arrange | Transform command to clear the transform, and then use the Scale page to scale the map appropriately.

Scale the map using the properties on the Scale page.

Limits
When a map is created, the limits are automatically defined by the coordinate extents contained in the file used to create the map. The Limits page in the Map Properties dialog lets you redefine the X and Y minimum and maximum values for your map (specified as xMin, xMax, yMin, and yMax values), so you can limit your map to a smaller area of interest. When you change the limits of your map, the Use Data Limits check box automatically becomes unchecked. If you want to reset the map limits back to the default, recheck the Use Data Limits check box.

Set the limits of the map by changing the X and Y minimum and maximum extents on the Limits page.