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Figure 2: The Hopara Visual Space
In a Hopara application, you navigate around a three dimensional space as noted in Figure 2. Here you see three axes, denoted X, Y, and Z. In a geographic setting, think of X as longitude, Y as latitude, and Z as height (altitude). However, the axis can mean lots of things other than geographic coordinates, as we will see presently. In addition, Figure 2 contains a camera at a specific position in this space, looking down on the X-Y landscape. You can move the camera sideways by panning and vertically by zooming/unzooming.
Most of you are familiar with Google maps, which has the same pan/zoom paradigm for geographic maps. Hopara significantly generalizes Google Maps, so you can think of Hopara as Google Maps on steroids, if you wish. The “basic labs” application exploits a geographic paradigm, so this section should seem familiar. Return to Figure 1, so we can explain the navigation controls on the right side of the screen.
Figure 2: The Hopara Visual Space
On your screen, you see a window onto the underlying data structure, which is an outline map of the world. Move your mouse to any given location, say Texas, and hold the mouse button down. Now move your mouse around. You should see the window move with you. Try moving to South America to get the display of Figure 3 and then back to the USA to Figure 1.
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Figure 3: Window on South America
Move your mouse to some desirable place in the center of the screen (say Nebraska). Then, move your mouse over to the +/- control on the right-hand side of the screen. Click plus and you should see the screen of Figure 4. Another click yields the screen on Figure 5.
If you click (-) twice you will return to the screen of Figure 1. You can click + or – as many times as you want. You can readily see the finest granularity possible with succession of + gestures. Similarly, you can see the coarsest overview by a succession of – gestures. This detail on demand is a core feature of Hopara, and we will term this zoom/unzoom throughout this guide.
You can also zoom/unzoom by using the scroll feature of your mouse. Try this to familiarize yourself with the gestures. As an exercise, pan to one of the beakers, representing a lab and successively zoom. You will note that the beaker disappears in favor of a floorplan. Continue to zoom and you will see individual pieces of equipment on the floorplan.
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Figure 4: Zoom in on Figure 1
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Figure 5: Another zoom on Figure 1
Often you want to move to a specific location, say Cleveland, Ohio. Of course, it is fine to pan to Ohio and then zoom in to see city locations and then move to Cleveland. However, Hopara offers you a rapid transit option. On the right side of the screen you will see a magnifying glass icon. Click on it and type in Cleveland. Since there are multiple cities with this name, you will be prompted to disambiguate your search request. On selecting the correct Cleveland, Hopara will move/zoom to Cleveland, and you will see the display of Figure 6. This is a very fast way to get to a specific location.
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Figure 6: Rapid Transit.
The final icon on the right side of Figure 1 is a rotation icon. Click on it to enable rotation and then mouse around to rotate the display. Clicking on the rotation icon again freezes the display in the current orientation.
See if you can get something like Figure 7. Although this is not particularly useful for geographical displays, it is often valuable for floorplans or CAD displays that may not be correctly aligned.
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Figure 7: Rotated version of Figure 1
The last concept in this section is your ability to get additional information by hovering over specific places on the display. Move to Arizona and hover over the red lab. You should see the display of Figure 8.
This will give you the information on why that lab is color coded red. Try hovering over the other two labs to see their details. In effect, “red” means there are critical sensors, “yellow” indicates warning sensors and blue indicates there are no problems. In this guide, you will learn how to change these colors, as well as many other editing operations.