In the Propeller universe, measurements are everything.
Naturally, they get a lot of airtime in our product design chats. The more we chatted, the more we saw an opportunity to streamline the experience.
The solution: A new toolbar that hangs out at the top of your map, autosaves your work, and makes drawing shapes and measurements easier.
Here’s an overview of what’s coming now, what’s coming later, and how the toolbar will improve your current workflows.
Important things to know
- The new toolbar will replace the current yellow Create Measurement button.
- Your previous bookmarks will automatically be carried over to the new toolbar (up to 9 bookmarks).
- There will be new basic templates, like line and area (polygon).
- There will be new shortcuts to select tools even more quickly.
Rather watch than read? We’ve got you covered.
Recommended reading
Getting Started Using the Measurement Tools
Creating and Customizing Templates
What’s changing? The previous measurement experience
First, let’s take a look at the old measurement experience. Say you wanted to check a slope angle:
From there, you could bookmark it for quicker access the next time. Easy, but not easy enough by our standards.
If we find ourselves designing something that requires repetitive action, we always try to avoid it. If we can’t automate it, we make it as fast as possible. This time, we saw an opportunity to help users make the same measurements with a lot less clicks.
Enter, the new toolbar experience...
What’s coming? A new toolbar, less clicks, faster insights.
All of the measurement templates and tools you know and love are getting a new home on the map. We’re replacing the old Create Measurement button with a sleek new toolbar.
COMING FIRST
New toolbar
With the first update, you’ll see the new toolbar. Here’s what it looks like.
It lives right on the map and includes three dual-action buttons. Meaning, when you click on the icon for Point, Line, or Polygon, you’ll activate the drawing tool, and when you click on the drop-down, you’ll see a list of measurement templates.
You can pin them to the toolbar from there for easy access later on. See how it works >
Hotkeys
And if you’re really looking to save time, you’ll now have access to hotkeys. You can learn the shortcuts by hovering your mouse over the tool you’d like to use until the tooltip appears. See how it works >
COMING LATER
The second round of updates will include a new properties panel and add an autosave option to the toolbar.
Autosave
You’ll be able to enable Autosave right from the toolbar. When it’s on, shapes like points, lines, and polygons are saved immediately after you finish drawing them—no extra clicks are needed.
You can keep working with the same tool for consecutive shape creation, streamlining your workflow. The template you’ve selected stays selected until you pick another one or go anywhere else in the platform.
Properties panel
Eventually, all measurement properties will be displayed on the right, like they are in the image below.
Previously, this data was displayed on the left, which could get a little cluttered. With our new design, we’re cleaning things up.
With the new panel, you can explore individual measurements in detail, while keeping your overall project context in view – and it’s collapsable if you need more map space. See how it works >
Want to turn off the new properties panel?
You can easily switch back to the previous measurement properties layout. Go to Settings > Measurement Properties and toggle off Display properties on the right.
And that’s it for now, folks. If you have questions or thoughts — give us a shout. 👋
I still can't do it!
We wrote these articles to equip you with everything you need to get the job done on your own, but we understand that sometimes this isn't sufficient.
If you're stuck, you can connect with our support team by clicking the support button on the top right corner of your user portal.
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