Clearly we haven’t made Layers intuitive enough for some but I’m having a really hard time understanding exactly what the problem is based on these complaints.
The Layers features are completely additive; we didn’t remove anything when they were added. While a few things moved around, Coastal Explorer can be used exactly the way it has in the past.
We added two features: Cloud-Synchronized Layers and the ability to show more than one layer on the chart at a time.
Obviously we added the concept of a “layer” too; as a way to describe what can either be a cloud-synchronized collection of navigation objects or a .nob file based collection of objects and that can be hidden and shown as a whole. That concept was simply added so that those collections of objects could listed along with the switches that control whether or not they appear on the chart.
If you don’t want our cloud-synchronized layers and only want everything to be in a .nob file, then only use .nob files and don’t create any cloud-synchronized layers. If you don’t like using the menu to get to the New Voyage Plan Document and Open Voyage Plan Document commands, then please know that the standard Windows keys Ctrl+N and Ctrl+O still invoke those commands like they always have.
A .nob file is still a collection of nav objects; they are not part of some greater definition of ‘object’ (whatever that even means). Absolutely nothing about .nob files has changed.
If you want to know what’s in a .nob file, select it and hide the other layers. What you see is what you get. This is EXACTLY the same as opening a .nob file in the past.
If you don’t like layers and want things to work the way they used to, then never use one of the toggle switches and just select the nob-file-based layer you want to use; that is exactly the same as opening a .nob file was before we added layers.
However, if you want the ability to have navigation objects automatically synchronize across all of your PC’s, iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and any web browser, then give our cloud-synchronized layers a try. Maybe not all of your objects should be stored in them, that’s up to you; it’s easy to copy or move objects from one place to another, especially since you can look at more than one layer at a time.
I would love to hear any ideas on how we could make these features better or more intuitive!