Just pretend that didn’t happen – Undo your work in Global Mapper

Quite possibly, the most requested feature in Blue Marble history will finally arrive in the version 23 release of Global Mapper and Global Mapper Pro. Slated for mid-September of this year, current and future users of Global Mapper will be able to undo previous actions and just pretend like it never happened! The debut of the undo tool and undo manager, complete with a redo option, may seem unnecessary to the pros out there who never make a mistake, but for us mere mortal GIS technicians, specialists, and researchers, the undo functionality is a welcome addition to Global Mapper.

Over the years, our technical support team, sales staff, and training instructors have heard repeatedly that sometimes users just need to take it back a step or two, and up until now Global Mapper did not offer an efficient way to do that. When digitizing new features, there was limited use of the Ctrl+Z undo shortcut as well as a restore function to revert edited features to their original shape. With the introduction of terrain painting, the words ‘undo’ and ‘redo’ first appeared in the program. These buttons for manual terrain editing aren’t going anywhere, but the new Undo Manager will contain more possibilities for reverting your work to a previous state.

Found in the Edit menu, the Undo Manager will track recent actions and operations executed in Global Mapper and list them for you to undo. The actions that can be tracked by the Undo Manager encompass many functions in Global Mapper:

• Changed Layer Options
• Changed Settings
• Changed View Projection
• Closed Layer(s)
• Edited Vector/Lidar Data
• Loaded Layer(s)

Any terrain creation, watershed analysis, raster calculation or other analysis function will typically create a new layer as an output and reverting the workspace to a previous state  simply entails removing the last loaded layer. Manual editing of a vector feature, classification of a point cloud, or rectification via manual or automatic means are all considered editing vector and/or lidar data and can be incrementally undone. Altered visualization, cropping, or elevation settings applied through the Layer Options dialog can also be easily undone with the new undo menu option or classic Ctrl+Z shortcut.

The Undo Manager allows users to see the tracked tasks that can be undone/redone and manage what types of operations will be tracked.

While all the listed categories of actions can be tracked and undone in Global Mapper, not all need to be. The Undo Manager lets the user decide which actions to track in order to have the option to undo them. Tracked operations are listed in the Undo Manager dialog and once an operation is undone, it populates the redo queue to be redone as easily as it was undone.

With the introduction of this long-awaited functionality in the program we are aiming to make it as easy to find as possible. The undo and redo options will be available in the Edit menu and as thee keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl+Z for undo and Ctrl+Y for redo.

For more news pertaining to Global Mapper 23 and Global Mapper Pro, sign up to receive updates and new feature details in your inbox. If you would like a sneak peek at some of the other enhancements in version 23, register for the next in the GeoTalks Express webinar series scheduled for August 25 at 10:00 am (EDT). If you would like to explore the current release of Global Mapper download a 14-day free trial today, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.