Orthophoto BETA is here
A new type of data
Orthophotos provide one more layer of information to the stack. You can now include a high-res orthophoto in your dxf file under Contours. Aquiring and aligning orthophotos has been challenging before, but should now be trivial. Cetopo now provides you with accurate aerial imagery by the National Land Survey of Finland. Resolutions range from 16 to 1 pixels / square meter.
Just BETA for now
Orthophotos are now released as a BETA, meaning that the availability and quality of the data cannot be guaranteed. The underlying data is coming from a BETA service of the NLS. The Orthophotos will for now only be available as part of the Contours product, and only in the most common coordinate system, ETRS-TM35FIN.
To try out this feature, select an area, and then click Contours. Scroll down to the bottom of the settings, and enable Orthophoto. Click download, and you should receive a zip file with a dxf and the image.
Limitations (during BETA)
Orthophotos will have some limitations during BETA.
- The data is downloaded from the NLS. It is thus subject to their availability. If you get an error message while trying to download the orthophoto, it might be because the NLS service is not available.
- Restricted to orthophotos less than 2km wide, and 2km tall.
- Only available in ETRS-TM35FIN coordinates (the most common one) for now.
- This is a BETA product, thus it might stop working at any time.
Feedback
Please try out this feature, and send us an email with your thoughts!
Example of a circular selection, contours+buildings+road+orthophoto. (DrafSight 2018)
Fixes
Student account re-activation
It's been a year since many of you registered, and it's now time to re-confirm your accounts. Unfortunately there was a bug in the re-confirmation process, Which should now be fixed. If there is still some problem in the process, please contact me here max.cedercreutz@cetopo.com
UX Improvements
The UX of the map view has been improved as part of an ongoing process to improve the Cetopo work flow. Some features were unintuitive, and should now be more clear.
A significant improvement is the introduction of undo+redo. Selections can now be undone and redone using the familiar keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y, or using the buttons on the interface.
Other notable improvements
- A loading animation for images
- A crispier polygon-select tool
- Unambiguous red borders now mark the end of tha available area
The red boundary is visible at the top. The loading animation is (not moving) visible inside the selection.
Reduce And Smooth
Lasercutting small areas used to result in an unwanted "polygon" look due to the 2x2m resolution of the underlying data.
Smoothing
You can now specify a Smooth parameter for your laser cuts. This will tell Cetopo to smooth out the resulting contours for better aesthetics. The parameter is in millimeters, and specifies the maximum deflection of the curve. Lower values are thus smoother. If you prefer not to smooth the data, you can leave Smooth as 0.
Left: No Reduce, Bottom-Right: Reduce, Top: Reduce and Smooth
Left: No Smooth, Right: Smooth
Reducing
Smoothing is an aesthetic preference. Sometimes a polygon look is preferable, or maybe you want something even softer looking than what smooth produces. Reduce allows you to reduce the amount of data points that are used. Reduce is also in millimeters, but specifies the minimum deflection of the curve. Higher values are more reduced. Leave Reduce as 0 for no reduction.
Combining
Reduce is applied before smooth. For example, Reduce = 5, Smooth = 0.01, will first reduce the curves to 5mm deflection, and then smooth them to 0.01mm deflection, resulting in a very smooth, but inaccurate result. Aggressively reducing the data might result in bad laser cuts, with layers that dont stack properly. Experiment with different values and use the 3D-preview to verify how it will look!
Laser Cut Improvements
Automatization is nice as long as it does what you want. Some user-feedback has now been implemented!
Part separation
The nester now allows you to specify a minimum separation between parts. This can be useful in improving cut accuracy and finnish quality, as well as making the file more readable.
Nesting time
Cetopo now allows you to run the algorithm for much longer to improve nesting. There is a Quick Nest option in the Laser Cut settings which allows you to toggle the nesting duration between ~5sec and ~30sec.
Here is a fairly large laser cut, nested with a 1mm minimum part separation. Click here to view.
The 3D-preview of the same model as in the other image. Coffee cup for scale.Click here to view.
Preview size reference
It can be hard to judge how large something is when its floating in space on a computer screen. You can now add a reference coffee cup to the preview window. The coffee cup is 80mm tall and 80mm in diameter.
Preview visuals
The laser cut preview is rendered with a real "laser-cut-plywood" photo-texture. The texture is correctly scaled to your model size. You can almost feel the wood!
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