Only one shoreline in ReefMaster ??
I am working on a DrDepth survey of local creeks (see attachment) and it does not seem to lend itself to just one shoreline, as I have come to understand them in DrDepth. The shore/boundary lines I have used to date are all defined as depth = '-1' so as to not be part of the calculations but to simply provide a cutoff to prevent interpolation from bleeding over/across.

Perhaps I could simply close the off each of the individual curved shoreline segments with a straight line connecting the current endpoints and call them all islands. That is visually unappealing with the incongruous extra straight line segments but would not be a big visual deal and might serve the purpose.

I am preparing to move to Reef Master and am now working on the tutorials using the trial version.
As someone that just did get DrDepth up and running it is challenging to make the move but ReefMaster seems the better long term choice for presenting my map data, not to mention the fact that DrDepth community is drying up and blowing away. ReefMaster clearly has an active user base, good developer support and development momentum. Seeing a well attended forum with a very responsive developer is very encouraging.
We are looking forward to our third season as 'Southport Paddle and Sail" and to date most of our business has been paddle board lessons and excursions for beginners. The goal of the mapping is to make the the local shallow oyster bank creeks safely accessible to us so we can share a piece of nature with others. Also, we are adding a gaff rigged schooner to the fleet for local charters and so surveys are in order so the schooner can frequent places previously thought way to risky to visit.

Help,
George Ray, Cape Fear, NC, USA

As I understand it shorelines are intended for lakes where it is only possible to have a single shoreline. If you are mapping creeks you will need to set the lines to islands which if I am not mistaken do not have to be closed. I do not believe there is a limit on the number of "islands" a map can have.

With regards to setting the shoreline or island to -1 this will factor in the calculation, which can be a good thing if you're mapping areas that dry like mud flats. If you just want the island to bound the map set turn off the "Assign Depth" option in the properties window.

Dan

Hi George,
Yes - each RM map project is limited to a single shoreline, but there can be any number of islands.
In your situation, you would need to join your various discontinuous sections of shoreline so that they form a single enclosing polygon. The basic logic of shorelines (map boundaries) in RM is that everything outside of a shoreline or within an island is excluded.

There are a number of attributes that you can set on an individual shoreline, including the option Provides Depth which acts in the same way as your "-1" setting; i.e. the shoreline will still act as a boundary, but it will not provide depth data. The default for a shoreline is that it provides depth data for the value specified in the Depth field (typically zero).
You might run into some issues with ReefMaster lack of extrapolation. At the moment, RM does not extrapolate at all, it only interpolates between depth points. In your example, this would probably mean some empty space between your tracks and the shoreline, if the shorelines themselves are not set up to provide depths.

Although it can get a bit awkward, it is possible to set up a project to use an overall shoreline and any number of "islands" that can be used to limit the map in the way you describe. If just want a barrier effect during map creation, uncheck provide depths and Show in Map. Setting the latter option will prevent the shoreline from being shown in the finished map.

Matt