Land Use (Clutter) Region, Draw Building, and Traffic Region are three specialized drawing tools used to facilitate the creation of new files of that type. The Land Use selection allows you to draw a polygon representing a new clutter boundary, which can then be saved to a file, converted to a clutter data file and used with your clutter databases. The Draw Building selection works the same way, except it results in an “.mcs” file which the program can use in propagation calculations for obstructions or permeable objects depending on the propagation model used. The Traffic Region selection works like the land use selection, except you end up with a traffic data file instead of a clutter data file.

Land Use (Clutter) Region

A common use for this feature is to modify an existing clutter database. Currently, the clutter data EDX has for sale was compiled from 2011 data. It’s not uncommon to find areas around quickly growing cities where the clutter database may report forest, agricultural or some other category, while looking at a current satellite or Google Earth image shows it’s been converted into urban, suburban, or other clutter use type. You could check with EDX or a third-party data supplier to buy a more up to date tile, but in some cases it’s quicker to just make a new file for that area.

Start by selecting Draw>Land Use (Clutter) Type and you see the following dialog box:

Select the type of clutter region you would like to draw. 

Draw your shape as described in the Polygon section above. Right-click on the polygon to get the contextual menu where you can delete, change the color and line width and save it to a file. Once you’ve saved the file you can use it in one of two ways. You can go to the Databases>Land Use section and convert the file to a clutter file, or you can rename the file to override.bna and put it in your clutter directory. Either way, when the program sees the new clutter file or the override.bna file, it will use that instead of the original clutter file. For clutter files, you can only use one polygon per file. For the override, you can save multiple polygons to the file. Generally, you should not draw clutter regions smaller than 100x100 meters.

Draw Building

Drawing buildings on the screen works similarly to drawing the land use polygon. Select Draw>Draw Building and from the dialog box that appears set the height of the building you’re going to draw and then choose the material type you want the wall to be set to. The values in this list are controlled by the materials characteristic file specified under the Databases>Buildings/Floorplans>Wall material type data file selection. This file is explained in greater detail in the Databases section of this reference manual. Draw your building polygon. Once drawn you can right-click, and besides the usual selections described in other sections above, you can change the material type after the fact. When you save it to a file, use the EDX “.mcs” building file format extension.

When drawing buildings, it’s common to use the Bing Map Layer satellite image setting to provide a picture that you can use to trace the building outlines. You would just create multiple drawings for multiple buildings. Once you’ve traced all the buildings, you can then select all graphic objects and save them all to a single “.mcs” file. 

Traffic Region

This feature allows you to create an area and designate the general traffic value for that region. Select Draw>Traffic Region to draw your polygon. From the dialog box choose the type of traffic you want to represent (milliEarlangs or Mbps), set the traffic density value, then click OK to draw your polygon. Right-click to save and access other options. Once drawn, this file can be used by going to Databases>Traffic Data and pointing to a folder that contains traffic files like the one you just generated.

Import

This feature allows you to import “.bna” and “.edx” type data files directly into the graphic objects layer. Once imported, they behave like any other graphics object in the layer.

Logo Bitmap

This feature allows you to place your company logo on the screen for use during presentations. It will print in the position you place it, regardless of logo setting in the Legend window.

Select Draw>Logo Bitmap and select the file you wish you use. It can be in “.bmp” or “.png” format. Once you select the file, the cursor will turn to a pointer where you can click to set the upper left corner of the logo location, then drag to size the logo. Once displayed on the screen, you can right-click on one of the corners, and one of the choices is to Edit Bitmap, which opens an Edit BitMap Dialog where you can resize the logo and place a label with it. Holding down the shift key while selecting the logo on the screen will allow you to move the logo to a different position.