Creating Descending KP Charts

There can sometimes seem to be some confusion amongst some of our users when it comes to making Charts in that have the route KPs running from right to left on the chart. Maybe the process isn't as clear as it could be until you are aware of the options available in AutoChart, so hopefully this article will go some way to clearing up any confusion.

If your route runs in a predominantly East-West direction, you run into the situation that with the KPs running from Left to Right on the Chart, the Plan view box ends up having North pointing towards the bottom of the page. If you want the Plan view box to have North pointing upwards (generally the preferred option) then you need to make the KPs run from Right to Left on the chart. In AutoChart this is achieved by creating 'Descending KP' Charts.

The trick is to use Create Panels in the normal manner so that they run in the direction of the route. DON'T however then try to manually flip the orientation of the panel manually. If you use the Show Panel Info utility to display the Panel ID as a piece of text, you'll see the text appears upside down.

That is all OK and how it should be, because AutoChart controls the KP Direction in the Create Charts command using the Chart Direction option.

When you run Create Charts, you should change the Chart Direction option to 'Descending KPs/MPs'. When you do this you'll notice that the Panel Origin now prompts you to select the Top Right corner of each Plan Panel.

That's all that needs to be done. In effect what this does when the charts are created is to 'flip' the Panel UCS by 180° so that within the Chart's Plan panel, North will point towards the top of the chart and Kps will run from Right to Left across the chart.

Just remember then when you use Cut Data to rotate Text/Blocks/Hatches to use the Panel angle + 180° option so that these entities are the correct way up when inserted into the charts: