Plex.Earth 3 features a new Mosaic Creator that allows you to have full control over the imported images. You can stop and resume the capture, exclude and replace tiles, preview them in your project and much more. The Mosaic Creator is different depending on the image source (Google Earth or Map Explorer), so both will be presented here:
Google Earth Mosaic Creator
When creating any Mosaic, a window with a preview of the created grid will appear (in this example, it is made out of 9 tiles). You can select any number of tiles and perform the following actions:
| Capture | Capture (or recapture) the selected images | |
| Zoom | Zoom the AutoCAD window to the area defined by the selected tiles | |
| Tile Preview | Preview the placing of the selected tiles in AutoCAD | |
| Exclude | Exclude the specified tiles from the image import | |
| Google Earth View | Zoom the Google Earth window to the area defined by the selected tiles |
Recapturing tiles can be especially useful if only a few of the images of a large mosaic have not been imported correctly, as you no longer need to recrated the whole mosaic from scratch.
Map Explorer Mosaic Creator
The Mosaic Creator that appears when using the Map Explorer is much more advanced.
The window is divided in four parts:
1. Mosaic Grid
A preview of the mosaic that will be created is dislayed here (the image shows the grid AFTER the image capturing has taken place, see below). You can select any number of them and perform the actions explained in (4).
2. Capture and Import
When the Mosaic Creator is first invoked, the preview grid will appear empty on the right side. Use "Capture images" to have Plex.Earth make all the necessary image captures from Google Earth and show a preview of the final grid on the right. You can apply changes and recapture at will. When you are satisfied with the result, use "Import images into drawing" to create the mosaic in your AutoCAD drawing.
3. Mosaic Options
The scale of the imported images, the tile size and the applied image overlapping is shown here. You can changed those values by selecting "Change mosaic values" (you will to recapture the images for the preview grid to be updated). You can also select "Updated to current map" if in the meantime you have made changes to the contents of the Map Explorer, and you want to update your mosaic.
4. Modify Tiles
Make a selection of Grid tiles and perform the following actions on them:
| Zoom | Zoom your drawing, the Map Explorer or Google Earth to the area defined by the selected tiles | |
| Select | Select all available tiles, revert the current selection of tiles, or simply clear it | |
| Preview | Preview the placing of the selected tiles in AutoCAD | |
| Exclude Tiles | Exclude the specified tiles from the image import (use this option before capturing images) |
If any of the grid tiles have not been imported correctly, you can select them in the Mosaic Creator and recapture just them.