Recent Posts

11

Support / Exporting the detailed corrections in receiver calculations

« Last post by roger on November 23, 2018, 06:20:29 PM »

When doing receiver calculations, the 'Live' calculation will let you view the value of each correction that makes up the contribution of each source segment to the total noise level.  When you choose to store receiver calculation results in the database, the make-up of each calculation is not usually available, partly because the amount of data can be so large.

However, you can select this option using the contribcsv script file parameter in the calc receivers script command, as follows:
Command "calc receivers" details:
    Description: Perform or queue a set of stored receiver calculations
    Parameters: tiles - Tiles specified as a comma-separated list of NoiseMap tile references or tile reference ranges
                area - Tiles specificied as a NoiseMap named area
                method - Noise calculation method, eg. Lden,RoI(2005) or Leq,16h(03)
                surround - Tile surround for load and calculation
                recalc - Force recalc switch for calculation
                queue - Calculation - queue calculation switch
                coa - CRTN parameter: cut-off angle
                cor - CRTN parameter: reflection cut-off
                cod - CRTN parameter: cut-off distance
                maxeffbar - Maximum number of effective barriers to search during calculation
                engines - Number of calculation engines to use (or use "auto" or "integrated")
                contribcsv - Path to root folder within which to save noise source contribution csv files for each receiver

Note that the contribcsv parameter will let you specify a target folder within which the output you need is written. Note that you specify a folder not a file as NoiseMap will create a structure with a sub-folder for each tile, and then a separate file for each receiver. So you can queue up a bunch of calculations and point at a single shared root folder (on a network drive) and have multiple computers fill it up as they process tiles.

The detailed data is not stored within the database so you do have to re-run the calculation even if you’ve already done it (the database results will also be updated, although again not with all the additional data).

This option is for the specialist use of those who need to do further post-processing of the calculations.
You will need to provide your own post-processing software/spreadsheet for such work - it is not part of NoiseMap.

12

Support / Upgraded security on Pay-As-You-Go Address (URL)

« Last post by roger on October 22, 2018, 06:30:25 PM »

As part of a programme to improve security, the link to our Pay-As-You-Go pages now requires you to use https:// as follows:

https://payg.noisemap.com/payasyougo/

This will take you to the login page which operates as previously.

13

Support / My licence says it has expired

« Last post by roger on October 15, 2018, 11:45:59 AM »

There are two parts to a NoiseMap licence - the main licence that allows you to use NoiseMap, and the maintenance section that allows you to receive support and updates.  When you have a permanent licence (actually a 50-year licence) we still set it to expire after five years, but we renew it free of charge when it expires.  This is just in case you lose the dongle or it is stolen.  We don't want someone else to have continuous use of NoiseMap. 

The second part is the maintenance.  This is a valuable service that gives you updates and technical support.,  It is particularly important when you first buy a licence.  Firstly because we don't want you to delay buying a licence in case there is an update 'just around the corner', and secondly new users may be the greatest beneficiaries from technical support. 

However, we have a policy of issuing worthwhile updates about once a year, and sometimes interim updates more frequently.  So if you would like to receive updates and support continuously, it is worth renewing your maintenance annually.  Maintenance generally costs about 20 % of the as-new price, so this means that you get continuous updates and support for the same price as buying a new licence every five years. 

You will get a reminder of the expiry of your main licence from about one month prior to expiry.  This is generated from within the software, so you won't get a reminder if you don't run NoiseMap.  However, the licence status is always given on the Output Screen when you start NoiseMap, so if you don't use it continually, it might be an idea to make a note in your calendar.

If you are on an annual licence, it is a similar situation. 

NoiseMap five licences can be renewed by issuing you with an activation code.  Just email us and we will deal with it.
NoiseMap Enterprise licences can also be renewed remotely, although this needs us to send you a 'Dongle Recovery File'.  Again, please email us and we will be glad to help.

You will get a similar reminder about maintenance, although if it does expire, NoiseMap will continue to run: you just won't get any further updates or email support.

We don't usually issue emails about new releases of NoiseMap.  However, you can always check by starting NoiseMap and going to Help>Check licence status if you are running NoiseMap five.

If you are running NoiseMap Enterprise, then log into our website and check the News section for announcements.

In fact, the website has a great deal of information on updates to NoiseMap five as well.  Sometimes, the significance of updates may not be obvious and it is well worth looking at the News announcements in particular as these might highlight something that is important to you.  Recently, these have included enhancements to the scripting functions: not something that everyone uses, but if you are engaged in some of the huge projects currently being undertaken, you could find these very helpful.

14

Hints and Tips / What sort of digital mapping do you recommend?

« Last post by roger on June 14, 2018, 11:08:19 PM »

Digital mapping has greatly improved over the last few years.  In the UK, the Ordnance Survey 1:1250 maps, known as MasterMap, are the most detailed maps, showing all mapping objects, with each object separately identified.
These are now provided in a variety of formats and we recommend Shapefile format as being the easiest to use with NoiseMap.  Building height and topographical data is also available.  OS have an agreement to provide local authorities with digital mapping and if you are working for a local authority, they may be able to provide you with Shapefiles of the area, provided to sign a licence agreement. Otherwise, OS prefer it if you buy the mapping from one of their 'partner' companies, who generally charge according to the size of the area and the terms of the licence.

We have written some detailed guidance on the use of digital mapping with NoiseMap, which is available to download from our website, on this link:
http://www.noisemap.ltd.uk/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/NoiseMap-five-digital-mapping-guide-detailed.pdf

15

Hints and Tips / What is the best way of segmenting roads?

« Last post by roger on May 23, 2018, 04:28:06 PM »

'Calculation of Road Traffic Noise', CRTN, states in para 11:  that roads should be divided into ‘a small number of segments’ such that ‘within any one segment the variation is less than 2 dB(A)’.

NoiseMap has an automated segmentation feature which generates segments along the road alignment to fit the horizontal and vertical curvature of the road to within a selected tolerance.  We recommend that this should be 1 m horizontally and 0.5 m vertically.

This is a geometric fit, rather than an acoustical fit.  However, it should be sufficient to deal with any variations in sound level due to distance and gradient.

Screening is more difficult because this is dependent on the position of the receiver relative to the position of screening objects. NoiseMap deals with this by sub-dividing the primary segments according to the position of the screening objects: indeed, the sub-divided primary segments are then further sub-divided by secondary screening objects. This sub-division is a complex process that takes up most of the calculation time, but ensures that multiple barriers are correctly assessed even if the primary segments are very long.

It should be noted that CRTN advises that roads are divided into a small number of segments.  This is an important proviso: in particular, if you follow the 'TRL' conversion procedure from L10 to Leq,t, this can be affected by the noise level emitted by each segment: very short segments will emit very little energy individually and this can distort the conversion formula.

Accordingly, we would not advise on pre-segmenting into say 10-metre segments as this could contravene the first part of the CRTN advice about ‘a small number of segments’ and then cause issues with converting the results to Leq,t.  This is particularly the case when using conversion methods 1 and 2.

16

Hints and Tips / Shortcut keys give access to many NoiseMap functions

« Last post by roger on May 22, 2018, 11:40:08 AM »

We have taken the view that the toolbar should be used mainly for buttons that give some feedback to users, such as whether you are in Select or Move mode, or whether a Shapefile is loaded.
A few other very common functions are also accessible from the toolbar.

To show every function on the toolbar, we would need to use something like the Ribbon system adopted by Microsoft.  Whilst you don't need to use the menus, it is quite often difficult and slow to find the function you require.

Instead we have adopted the Shortcut key system.  We have given shortcut keys to all the commonly-used functions and have done our best to make them reasonably meaningful or consistent with their uses in other Windows applications.  For example:
Ctrl+W = open database previeWer
Ctrl+S = commit (Save) changes
Ctrl+A = Add new object
Ctrl+C = Copy view to clipboard
Ctrl+D = convert Dxf/Shapefile selection to NoiseMap object
F2 = Display options
F4 = Show properties window
F5 = Show Results/Log window
F6 = Traffic flow manager
Ctrl+F2 = View as colour
Ctrl+F5 = Load Receiver Results
Shift+F5 = Receiver display parameters
Ctrl+Shift+X = Draw cross-section

See chapter 22 of the manual for a full list - all shortcut keys are also shown alongside the items in the NoiseMap menu.

17

Support / I cannot import some fields of my shapefile - they are always blank

« Last post by roger on May 22, 2018, 11:07:41 AM »

This is caused by an issue with data 'conversion'.  Computers can store data in many different ways: to be able to import it into NoiseMap, each field (i.e. column) of data must be store in a particular way.  NoiseMap uses one of three ways to store each field.  These are:

• integer - this is always a 'whole number' and is used for numbering items of data and where a parameter can be one of a limited number of values, such as absorbent or non-absorbent barrier;
• float - this is used for a value, such as the height of a ground contour, which can be of any size and often has a fractional part;
• character string - this is a string of printable characters used for describing things.  This can include numbers (such as a house number) but it is not a numerical value.  The house number 31, for example, does not necessarily mean that it is the thirty-first house in the street, it is just a label.

Very often, when you print a set of data, you have no idea what internal format the computer is using to store the information as it will be converted to printable characters before it can be shown on your screen or printer.

In the present case, the problem is caused because you want to import a column of data (a field), which has been stored by your GIS as an integer number, into the description field of the object, for which NoiseMap requires a character string.  Unfortunately, NoiseMap doesn't convert data from one format into another, and since it can't read integer numbers as if they are characters, it ignores the problem and leave the field blank. It doesn't report the problem either. 

The same problem would occur if you try to read a number stored in numerical format as if it were a character string.  However, it may be able to read integers as if they are floating point, although it would not normally read a floating point number as if it were an integer. 

For safety, you must always ensure that your Shapefile attribute data is in the format that NoiseMap requires - as listed in Chapter 21 of the User Manual. 

How can you do this?
The 'attribute' data of a Shapefile is stored in the database component (file type .dbf).  You can open this in Excel.  It will appear as an ordinary spreadsheet with column headings and columns of numbers. It will be obvious if a column contains non-numerical values that this is Character format. But if it contains numbers, you can't tell because Excel does its best to put them into printable character format on-screen.  There is quite an easy way to tell, though, if you open the dbf file in Notepad.  You will see the column headings as the first line of the file.  Each heading is followed by a letter N, F or C.  These stand for integer number, floating point number and character. 

If you open the file in Excel, you can convert any number to character format by using the formula =TEXT(A2,"#") This says, take the contents of cell A2 and convert it into a number in character format.  The "#" just tells Excel to display the number in general number format.  You can use different formats in place of the "#" to get the number displayed with different numbers of decimal places, etc. 

A small glitch is that although you can open dbf files in Excel, Microsoft has removed the ability to save files back into dbf format. You can buy add-ins to restore this ability.
Alternatively, go back to the GIS and export the field in the correct format.

18

Support / I am having trouble selecting objects on a second display screen

« Last post by roger on February 19, 2018, 03:01:07 PM »

You should be able to use NoiseMap across multiple screens of any size.

However, if the display driver does not report the screen size correctly to NoiseMap, then the location of the mouse/display cursor may be incorrectly reported. This will mean that you cannot select objects with the mouse or draw cross-section lines in the desired location.

We suggest that you try adjusting the display settings in Windows. For example, if you set as the primary display the one showing the model, this should alleviate the problem.

19

Hints and Tips / Re: I have been given 24-hour traffic flows. How do I apply them?

« Last post by roger on February 19, 2018, 02:29:20 PM »

Please note that recent investigations have shown a problem with using TRL/Defra Method 1 with 24 x 1-hr flows where the flows are low. Please read the advice under the Support forum above.

20

Hints and Tips / What is the easiest way to select an object with the mouse?

« Last post by roger on February 15, 2018, 11:13:40 PM »

Sometimes you may have difficulty in selecting objects with the mouse when they are very close together or when they are very large.

NoiseMap has many ways of selecting objects and you may need to try different methods depending on the situation.
The most common is to point the mouse at the object and then clicking. NoiseMap has different ways of showing when an object is selected: in the case of road, rail and route workings, the outline turns dotted and the end markers get a square around them. For buildings, the outline turns dotted and the fill turns purple.  In the case of contour lines, the end markers get a square round them and the line turns purple.  Also, if the properties box is open, then the object will be listed in the box. 

But which part of the object do you point at? Usually, it is best to point at an end marker.  But for large objects like buildings, NoiseMap locates the object at its centroid and it will be selected if you point at that.  This can cause confusion - for irregular objects the centroid may not be within the outline and when you try to select another object which happens to be close to that centroid, the 'wrong' object may be selected.

There are many techniques to get round the problem.

• If objects are extremely close, you can ‘switch off’ the ones you want to avoid – either by clicking on the visibility (eyeball) icon and deselecting, or by going to View>Display Options and setting the ones you want to avoid to grey. They won’t then be selected.
  
• Dragging around the end-point of an object is a more specific way of selecting than pointing and double clicking.
• if objects are virtually overlapping, double clicking successively should cycle through the objects.
• At the bottom of the Object Properties dialogue, there are forward and backward arrows that allow you to select the next object in the sequence
• You can use the Find function if you can guess a particular property of the object, such as its ID number, height, etc

It is also worth remembering that selection accuracy is increased if you load a smaller area of the model.