See Also
PowerWorld Simulator allows you to automatically insert geographic borders, which PowerWorld Corporation has drawn. These include the states in the United States of America and several international borders as well. You may also define a border in a text file and insert this User-Defined border. It is highly recommended that you create a diagram and insert borders before you begin adding power system objects to the diagram.
To bring up the
Options
The Options tab allows you to set characteristics of the border lines when they are inserted on the oneline diagram. Most of these options are available from the Format menu in Edit Mode, and can be changed for a border by selecting the border(s) in Edit Mode and then selecting the appropriate option from the Format menu to change the desired option(s).
Make border lines immobile
This option is very useful for preventing you from inadvertently moving the border lines in Edit Mode once they have been placed.
Automatically link county and state borders to supplemental data
Background lines created from inserting borders can be linked to Supplemental Data records for purposes of further identifying these objects. This is useful when applying filters, applying dynamic formatting, using Select By Criteria, or defining custom hints with display objects created from inserting the borders. This option is only available when inserting United States borders.
When this option is checked, background lines created for the borders will be automatically linked to Supplemental Data records. If necessary, Supplemental Data records will be created with the Classification being either State or County, depending on the Border Type selected when inserting United States borders, and the Name being the name of either the state or county.
Line Options
Choose the line thickness and line color for the border lines.
Fill Options
Choose the fill options if you wish to "fill in" the border regions with a background fill color.
Stack Level
Choose the stack level for the border lines. The stack level affects which objects appear "over" or "under" other objects on the diagram. Typically background lines are either placed in the Background or Base levels, so that they appear beneath power system objects on the diagram. Further we would recommend that if you are using background fill colors for the borders that you choose a stack level of Base. The only difference between the Background and Base levels is that the Base level objects can be right-clicked on in Run Mode and allows the default diagram popup menu to appear. Right-clicking on Background level objects in Run Mode will not display the default popup menu.
Layers
When Borders are automatically inserted on a diagram using this tool, a Borders screen layer will be added to the layer drop-down box, if a Borders layer does not already exist for the oneline diagram. You can choose to leave the borders in the standard Default layer, to place the borders in the new Borders layer, or you can create a new custom layer by clicking the Define Layers button. If no default borders layer has been previously established (borders were previously inserted on the oneline), the Borders layer or selected user created layer will be set as the default Borders layer. The default Borders layer is different than the standard Default layer for objects. The default Borders layer information is stored in the system registry, and is only used to recall which layer borders were assigned to the previous time borders were automatically inserted.
Apply Default Drawing Values
Click this button to apply the Background line settings from the Default Drawing Values.
Border File Path
Designate the border file location.
PowerWorld Library
Pre-Defined Selections
Choose between North America, USA State Borders, Canadian Province Borders, or Entire World to insert the selected region. These options make things quicker than selecting from the individual menus if entire countries or continents are to be inserted.
Once you have selected the regions that you want to insert, Click OK.
United States
This tab allows you to select states in the United States that you want to insert. (Note: to select several states to insert at once, use the Ctrl and Shift keys while clicking with your mouse.) These states will be placed on the screen such that as you add new states they will be placed geographically appropriately.
Include Hawaii and Alaska:Select all or any of these items to place these states on the screen.
Border Types: Select the type of border. State will only show the state border and the County will show the state border as well as the counties of the state.
Once you have selected the states you want to insert, Click OK.
Canada
This tab allows you to select provinces in Canada that you want to insert. (Note: to select several provinces to insert at once, use the Ctrl and Shift keys while clicking with your mouse.) These provinces will be placed on the screen such that as you add new provinces they will be placed geographically appropriately.
Once you have selected the provinces you want to insert, Click OK.
World
This tab allows to insert borders which PowerWorld Corporation has acquired for countries around the world. PowerWorld Corporation will continue to add more border files as we receive them. Note: if you have drawn a oneline which contains a geographic border you would like us to include in future version of Simulator, please contact us at support@powerworld.com and we'll add it to our next release.
This setting is important for anyone including border files outside of North America. By default, Simulator draws borders using a simple conic projection referenced to North America. This can result in border files of other countries being drawn incorrectly if based on this reference. To correctly draw borders of other countries around the world, select the Entire World setting, which uses a Mercator projection.
User-Defined Borders
This tab allows you to read in a border from a text file that you create. The first row of this text file is a comment row and is ignored when reading it in. After this it reads in the description of each background line. This description starts with the number of points in the line followed by a list of x, y coordinates. The file ends when the number of points for a line is read as -1. An example file follows:
Comment row
5
59, 60
10, 20
40.3, 95.20
89.3, 22.11
79.5, 34.56
45
40, 66
etc…
-1 this signifies the end of the file
To read the data, first specify the file name and location containing the data using the Browse button. Next indicate if the file contains data in Longitude, Latitude or in converted Simulator X,Y coordinates. If the data is Longitude and Latitude, then also specify if the map projection to use should be North America (simple conic) or Entire World (Mercator).