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How do I get help on using Curious World Maps?
How do I use context-sensitive menus?
How do I output my animations to video?
Can I produce maps that are at street level detail?
Why doesn't my license work?
How can I make sure all my maps look consistent?
Can I share my style-sheets across my Organisation?
Can I add an inset map to my picture?
Can I show a video or an image behind a map?
Can I show images, video, and text over my maps?
What size images can I create?
What file formats do you load?
What file formats can I output my work in?
Can I finish off my work with other graphics software?
We have some of our own map data already. Can we use it with Curious World Maps?
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How do I get help on using Curious World Maps?
Press F1 at any point to get help relevant to your current situation. You can also search the on-line help by choosing Help Topics from the Help menu. Curious World Maps also includes a comprehensive user guide which is supplied both in printed form and on the Installation CD as an Adobe Acrobat file.
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How do I use context-sensitive menus?
Many functions and actions in Curious World Maps can be accessed quickly through pop-up menus which appear when you click the right-hand mouse button. Try this in the viewer (where the menu will be different for each tool), in the Map Explorer, and in the keybars panel of map layers.
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How do I output my animations to video?
See our Video Specifications page for more information
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Can I produce maps that are at street level detail?
Absolutely! Curious World Maps allows the creation of detailed street and road maps, the creation of higher resolution maps for HDTV or print, use of satellite imagery for texture maps, and importing of separate detailed local data available from several sources via the Internet.
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Why doesn't my license work?
Hardware Key License: Check to see if the hardware key is properly secured, and then restart World Maps.
Ethernet ID (Temporary) license: Make sure that the license file is meant for the computer that you installed it on. You can check this quickly by cross-referencing the HOST ID within the license file against the Ethernet ID noted within Curious World Maps under License.
Note: The Ethernet ID must be exactly the same.
If you continue to have trouble making your license work, please run the software application and save a 'License Dump' file from license window that appears. Send the file to support@curious-software.com and one of our support representatives will endeavour to assist you.
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How can I make sure all my maps look consistent?
One of the most powerful features of Curious World Maps is the template or style-sheet functionality. You can design everything that's important to you about the way your maps should look ahead of time, and then apply the style to your maps with a single click. A map drawn with a particular style-sheet will always look consistent with other maps made with the same style sheet. This gives an extremely powerful way of ensuring that everyone who makes maps in your organisation will make them look right, and also saves a huge amount of time as the design needs to be done once and can be applied again and again to different maps.
You can have as many style sheets as you like - for example for different news broadcasts or different stations.
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Can I share my style-sheets across my Organisation?
Yes - style sheets can be saved as files to disk, and simply reloaded by other users. They can also be packaged up into templates (many style-sheets in a single template), which can then be installed in a shared directory on the network or on each machine running Curious World Maps.
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Can I add an inset map to my picture?
You can have as many maps as you wish in a single project - they can all be of different styles, in different sizes. This makes it very easy to make an image with, for example, a single large map layer showing a zoomed-in view of a particular place, and a second smaller map layer above it acting as an inset showing where the main map layer is in the world.
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Can I show a video or an image behind a map?
Absolutely. One way to do this is to set the fill style for Sea in your style sheet to None and place an image layer behind the map layer (load the image layer and drag it in the layers list until it is underneath the map layer). The image (which could be a still or video) will show through where the sea is usually drawn. Or you could render out your image or animation with transparency (alpha) - the sea with no fill will be transparent and have no alpha - and key the map over a background in another application.
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Can I show images, video, and text over my maps?
Curious World Maps supports as many additional layers of images and text as you need.
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What size images can I create?
Curious World Maps is fully resolution independent. The only thing to remember is that if you are going to work regularly with higher resolution images, you will need more memory to maintain the same level of performance.
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What file formats do you load?
Curious World Maps can load still images in all the common file formats - BMP, Targa, Tiff, JPEG, sgi, PICT, Mac Paint - full details are included in the manual and on-line help. You can also load in video clips stored in QuickTime movies. Images and movies containing transparency (alpha) can be loaded and the transparency information is used when compositing the layers in the application.
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What file formats can I output my work in?
You can save still images in all the formats described above, with or without transparency (alpha) information. Animation sequences can be rendered with each frame in a separate numbered file (eg. myanim0001.tga, myanim0002.tga), which can be imported into a wide range of existing applications and video devices. You can also render sequences as compressed or uncompressed QuickTime movies - ideal for web applications, or for importing into editing systems such as Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premier, etc.
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Can I finish off my work in a paint system or other graphics software?
Yes - because Curious World Maps allows you to save your still frames and animations in commonly used open file formats.
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We have some of our own map data already. Can we use it with Curious World Maps?
You can use some types of third-party data with World Maps, and there are conversion options available from Curious that will allow you to fully integrate your data.
You can convert Satellite data to Curious CMR format using the Convert or Convert and Combine options available from Curious. By converting the data you ensure that World Maps will geo-reference the imagery correctly.
You can use DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data with World Maps without conversion, provided it is in a compatible format – please note the following:
- USGS 7.5 minute, 15 minute, 2 arc-second and 1x1 degree tile Elevation products in the USGS "Native" format are supported provided they are in UTM projection. For a complete technical description of the supported format click here.
- The USGS 30 arc-second global data set is included within Curious World Maps, so it is not supported for DEM import.
- Many SDTS format DEM data files that use UTM projection and are in a gridded format will import correctly into Curious World Maps. We cannot however guarantee to load all files in SDTS format.
DEM files from Global Imaging, in BIL format, are supported.
- For DTED levels 1, 2, and 3 - see the DTED Specification for more information.
You can also use ESRI Shape File format data with Curious World Maps without conversion, provided that the data coordinates are in geographic (latitude, longitude) space.
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