Working with Coastal Explorer on building layers, with routes and other objects. I work on routes etc at home on my laptop using the CE software, and want the layers to show up on the navigation PC at the boat.
I’m at home, and the boat PC is well, at the boat.
Q1 - Do layers sync into the web version of CE? A layer I created last night, does not show up in the web version. Other layers do. I don’t remember doing anything to intentionally put those other layers into the web version. I have used the Sync Now link in CE. What am I missing?
Q2. Possibly related to Q1. Do I have to do something special to make a new layer a cloud sync layer? All I did was click on the “New Layer” button and get to work. There is no local file path shown under the layer name, so I am assuming it is supposed to be a cloud sync layer.
Edited - It did sync. But the sync process stripped out the layer name - it showed up as “Untitled.” Did I miss something? The synch process should not strip out the layer name.
This exact problem was reported in 2021. Scroll down to the bottom of the discussion.
My understanding is that if you go to the Layers tool and hit New Layer then it will automatically be created as a cloud synchronization layer. You can tell because when you view the layers there will not be a file path after the layer name.
If you use Voyage Plan then it will create a local file (layerName.nob) that is not cloud synchronized by CE. You can tell this by the file path after the layer name in the layer view panel.
It can be confusing because when you create a “local” .nob file it may be created in a OneDrive folder (e.g. under Documents) which will also try to sync with whatever other PCs you have. This sync is done at OneDrives leisure so may or may not happen right away. So when you open CE on the other PC it may or may not have the .nob file available.
I don’t use the web app so not sure how that factors in… sorry.
Yes, Cloud-Synchronized Layers will normally sync between Coastal Explorer on Windows, the web version, and the mobile versions, and clicking the New Layer button is all you need to do to create a Cloud-Synchronized Layer.
However, there is a problem with the current version of Coastal Explorer (Windows version) that frequently causes a problem with synchronization when a layer is first created. This problem usually clears itself up after a while, but is frustrating in the mean time. The symptom is usually that a new layer only appears on the system where it was created until a mark or other object is added and then the name reverts to “(Untitled Layer)” and that appears on other systems.
We are preparing an update that fixes this problem and a few others. You can preview it now if you want and we are hoping to release it soon.
I was seeing the “Untitled” problem when I created a route on my laptop then viewed it on the boat navigation NUC. I installed the preview on the laptop (but not the NUC), created a test route and it correctly appeared on the NUC.
EDIT: it does look like there’s something funny going on with the route name. It appears the name is being arbitrarily truncated when set in the Properties.
EDIT 2: something else not working… when I go to the route on the NUC, each leg that I associated a CURRENT station with says “Leg references unknown current station…”. Looks fine on the laptop. If I associate the CURRENT station again on the NUC then the laptop will display the message. This is probably caused by not running the same version on both devices. Is that a requirement?
EDIT 3: well… I decided to just use the NUC (boat computer) for now as I need to plan a departure tomorrow from Shilshole to Port Gamble. So I went onto the NUC and started associating the route legs with current stations. Everything was going well until I got to the top of the Hood Canal and noticed the Hood Canal Entrance current station was no longer displayed! I know it exists as it’s on the “preview” version on my laptop. I’d like to know how to get it back.
We made the Coastal Explorer update available this morning and it does fix a few issues we found with current stations attached to route legs in cloud-synchronized layers after making the preview available. Hopefully that solves some of the problems you’re seeing.
However, we have not seen the problem with names getting truncated or the missing current station you mentioned, so I’m not sure what’s wrong there…
Do you know if you’ve installed the latest US Tide and Current Data on your NUC? If not, that could explain the missing current station.
I had the latest current data on the NUC so it’s a mystery. However, since I had installed the preview on the laptop I just decided to update the laptop and re-install on the NUC (including latest current data). Now the missing current station is back and all looks good again.
