Viz World Classic User Guide

Version 23.0 | Published December 12, 2023 ©

Using Imported Relief Data

Viz World Classic allows you to import additional detailed relief data. A wide range of data is available directly from Vizrt and from third parties. Supported file formats include:

  • CDM (Curious DEM) from Vizrt.

  • Some types of DEM and SDTS from USGS, who provide data for most of the US and a number of other areas of the world.

  • Some BIL images from Global Terrain.

  • Some types of SRTM and DTED format data.

Please contact your local Vizrt representative for a full list of supported file formats and data products.

This section contains information on the following procedures:

To Import CDM Relief Data

  1. On the Import menu, select Curious CDM DEM Data ....

  2. Choose where the data is to be installed and click the Copy New Data… button.

For each set of CDM data you want to use you need to add a licence in the usual way. To show a list of the CDM data you have installed, and its license status, click the Check existing data for bad files or licences button.

To Import Relief Data

On the Import menu, click DEM Digital Elevation Model.... The Import Digital Elevation Model dialog box is displayed.

This shows the contents of the relief database, and allows you to add new files to the database. The Import DEM... button allows you to import DEM files from external sources.

You can undo the most recent imports using the Undo Imports button, or fit the map to the selected imports using the Fit Map To Imports button.

Because imported DEM data does not always match exactly with the data provided as standard with Viz World Classic, seams sometimes are visible at the edges of imported data. To avoid this, you can animate the amount of imported relief to be used, so that the imported relief is only visible when zoomed in enough that no such edges are visible, using the Imported Relief Blend control in the Map Features dialog box; for more information see the Setting Map Features section.

To Obtain DEM Data

Because DEM data for the whole world would occupy literally thousands of gigabytes, the data usually comes in tiles. You need to obtain several such tiles to cover the area you require.

For information about obtaining DEM data contact your local Vizrt representative.

To Undo DEM Imports

Because of the sheer amount of data involved with DEM files, and the unfortunate fact that DEM tiles need not actually have straight sides, providing a facility for undoing imports requires significant amounts of disk space.

Viz World Classic allows you to choose how much disk space to be allocated for undo information in the Options dialog box. You can only undo the most recent imports from the bottom of the import list, and it may not even be possible to undo these if there was insufficient disk space to hold the required undo information.

To Use Multiple DEM Databases

You can change the directory that Viz World Classic uses to store DEMs in the Options dialog box. Using several different directories allows you to have multiple DEM databases, each of which holds detailed relief data for a particular area. This can be useful if you need high-resolution relief data for a particular project, but do not want to keep using that imported data in your normal day-to-day work.