Shaped Beam Editor

The Shaped Beam Editor (SBE) allows you to edit or create shaped beams which can then be used as part of the detailed coordination process. The tool allows you to load GIMS format .gxt files. You can also export to GIMS format so anything you create can be exchanged with ITU software.

Launching

The Shaped Beam Editor is a separate tool from the main application. To open it choose Shaped Beam Editor from the Tools menu or click the Shaped Beam Editor button on the toolbar.

The Shaped Beam Editor window opens with a new shaped beam file by default. You can either proceed and start creating a beam from scratch or load in a GIMS .gxt file and work on that.

Setting Network Details

Use the controls at the top to set the name, admin and notice id for the network that the beam is to be a part of.

The orbital position of the satellite is set from the toolbar at the bottom of the window. When you change this you’ll see that the highlighted area of map representing the satellite field of view will change accordingly.

Adding Boresights

Click the Add Boresight button, then click on the map to add a boresight (hold SHIFT while clicking to add more than one).

Editing Boresights

You can move a boresight by clicking on it, holding the mouse button and dragging it to a new location.

To edit a boresight, first click to select it. You’ll see a small toolbar appear below the selection rectangle. This is called the Selection Toolbar

From here you can set the relative gain and the exact location in latitude and longitude coordinates. A boresight can also be duplicated and deleted from the selection toolbar.

Adding Contours

You then need to set the relative gain for the contour. This is shown in the label on the contour itself. By default it’s set to zero. To change it simply click on it then type in the relative gain you want and either click away or press ENTER.

Editing Contours

Click on a contour to select it. Just like boresights, contours have their own selection toolbar

Editing contour points is described in the next section. Reducing the number of points will intelligently reduce the number of points by around half. Smoothing on the other hand will re-sample the contour and add extra points to smooth out any sharp edges.

Edit Contour Points

To edit a Contour (be it Closed or Open), either double-click on it or select it and then press the Edit Points button on the Selection Toolbar or press ENTER.

You can click on a point and drag it to a new position. You can also use the cursor keys to move the selected point by small amounts up, down, left or right. Hold SHIFT while doing this to move the point by a larger amount each time. The same applies to selections containing multiple points.

Pressing the TAB key will select the next point in the contour and SHIFT + TAB will select the previous point.

To finish editing either click on the Map or another item or alternatively press ESC.

Detaching from the Field of View

As we mentioned earlier, open contours should start and end on the satellite field of view. If you drag an open contour then the end points will always remain on the field of view.

If you want to detach the end points from the field of view there are a couple of ways to do this. If you want to move the whole contour then simply click and drag it but hold SHIFT as you do this. The end points will then detach.

To re-attach the end points do exactly the same thing. Once an end point gets close to the Field of View both end points will re-attach at the nearest intersection.

HOVER MOUSE OVER CONTOUR HOLD SHIFT & CLICK AND DRAG If you only want to move the end points then first edit the contour. Click and drag an end point while holding SHIFT. The point will switch between being unattached or detached. Note that reattaching will only happen when you drag close to the field of view

Warnings and Errors

You may notice that as you start to construct your shaped beam an orange panel will appear in the bottom-right corner of the application window. This shows any warnings or errors. These are mostly advisory so that you can check your beam will conform to GIMS requirements as you go along.

If there are no errors or warnings you’ll see this:

If there are any warnings or errors you’ll see something like this

Multiple Selections

You can select multiple contours and boresights and then move, duplicate or delete all of them in one go. There are two ways to do this. You can click on an empty area of the map and then drag out a selection rectangle. Any contours or boresights that are caught in the rectangle will be selected. Alternatively just hold SHIFT and click to add or remove items from the selection.

Multiple selections have their own Selection Toolbar. If you have a combination of boresights and contours then you will only get options to Duplicate or Delete.

However, if your selection only contains contours then you’ll get all the options that are available to you when just a single contour is selected. This allows you make changes like smoothing or point reduction to several contours at once. You can also resize the selection when it only contains contours. All contours will size proportionally and maintain the same relative spacing from each another.

Copy and Paste

You can copy any selected contour or boresight, or any selected combination by using the standard keyboard shortcut CTRL+C. To paste the copied selection use the standard keyboard shortcut for paste, CTRL+V.

Display Options

There are several options for controlling the way that items are displayed. Click the Contour Colours button to choose one of eight built in colour schemes for displaying contours. Click on the map to finish.

Contour and Boresight gain labels can be switched on and off independently.

You can also hide contour point labels.

Saving Changes

When you’ve finished making changes to a shaped beam you can save it to GIMS .gxt format.

NOTE: Whilst the Shaped Beam Editor tool is available in the demo version, saving to .gxt file is disabled. You can still open and modify existing files and you can also create new ones, they just can’t be saved