How Does the Feature Book Work?

The Feature Book may be opened by using one of the following methods:

Press the Feature Book button of the Processing toolbar. By default, this toolbar is docked on the left of the MapLink Pro Studio main screen. Using this method, the Feature Book will open with all sections closed.
Select the Tools | Feature Book menu option. Using this method, the Feature Book will open with all sections closed.
Enable Select mode and double click on a map feature. Using this method, the Feature Book will open with the selected feature displayed.
Right click on a dataset or data file, and select the Feature Book option from the context menu. Using this method, the Feature Book will be opened at the section for the selected dataset.

The Feature Book is split up into Sections. Each Section can be considered to be a chapter of the Book. The first Section is a Reference Section detailing the rendering properties of system elements such as the tiling grid patterns. These are used purely within MapLink Pro Studio to aid navigation and will have no effect on the output map.

Additional Sections can be added to the Feature Book at any time. All data within a dataset uses rendering information from the same Section.

Within each Section, the Feature Book maintains a tree-like hierarchy of Feature Classes known as the Feature Tree. The hierarchy is automatically populated when data is added to the project tree. When a file is added, it is catalogued to determine which Feature Classes exist within the file, and these are added to the Feature Book Section used by the dataset. The Feature Tree is also affected by datasource specific configuration options, typically set through the Format Configuration dialog.

Alongside each Feature Class, the Feature Book displays a small sample of the current Rendering Properties that have been defined to visualise the Feature Class. There are four different samples, Line, Polygon, Text and Symbol. A separate window, the Feature Properties dialog, allows these visualisations to be modified.