Plotroom documentation

What is Plotroom

One screen for planning a passage, sharing it across the fleet, and getting it onto the ECDIS.

Plotroom is where a NOAA ship's navigation officers plan routes on NOAA Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs), share those routes across the ship and the fleet, and run them through an approval workflow before they become the plan of record. When a route is ready, you export it to the bridge's ECDIS as an RTZ route plan, and you can exchange chart objects — survey outlines, mooring marks, clearing lines — with the ECDIS as user-chart XML. A set of reference layers rides alongside your planning: a daily sea-ice overlay, NOAA survey-progress and bathymetry rasters, and each ship's vessel track.

Browser and graphics

Use an up-to-date browser with WebGL 2 graphics support. On an iPad, install the latest iPadOS update available for the device. If The map could not start appears, update the browser or iPadOS and enable hardware acceleration where available, then select Retry map. If it still cannot start, use another supported device. Your workspace controls remain available.

On a slow connection, allow chart detail and selected layers to finish drawing before interpreting the display. Blank areas during loading do not establish the absence of charted hazards or reference data. If background map tiles fail to load, available routes and overlays remain usable; check that the chart detail you need is visible before using the display for planning. Opening a route link frames that route when the map finishes starting.

Choose where to start

• Initial Ship Setup — for the first CO, navigation officer, or fleet administrator preparing a vessel's safety values and planning defaults.
• Quick Start — for a planner whose vessel is configured and who is ready to create, check, submit, and export a route.

Initial Ship Setup

Set the vessel's operating limits, safety values, and route defaults before the crew begins planning.

The ship's CO, NAV, OPS, or XO can edit these settings; a fleet administrator can also configure any vessel. Other users can read the settings. Use the vessel's approved standing orders and ECDIS settings as your source — do not copy values from another ship.

1. Confirm the vessel and first CO. The vessel name should appear in a shipboard user's header after sign-in. If it is missing or the wrong vessel appears, stop and ask a fleet administrator to correct the assignment. For a new vessel, the administrator uses Fleet > Personnel, + Add vessel, and the pending-account assignment controls; see Approving signup requests.
2. Open Ship configuration. Shipboard users select the vessel name in the header. An administrator selects Ship config, then chooses the vessel. Enter a number and press Enter or leave the field to save it. The History tab records each saved change.
3. Set vessel and solver limits. On Vessel, enter the vessel's Draft — the hull figure carried into the RTZ export. Review MIN speed, MAX speed, MAX height, MAX ROT, and MIN radius. Select the bridge's ECDIS vendor, and turn on Daily track import only when the vessel's call sign is configured for that service.
4. Set the safety presentation. On Safety, enter the vessel's Safety depth, Shallow contour, Safety contour, Deep contour, and Static UKC. Safety depth controls which soundings are emphasized; the contour values control depth shading. Enter the Safety contour before using AUTO REGIMES or ROUTE CHECK: it is the vessel's clearance boundary, and both tools stay greyed out until it is set. Individual users may adjust their own Chart display without changing these vessel defaults.
5. Set new-route defaults. On Defaults, review Default XTD, Default radius, and Default speed. These values seed new routes and waypoints; changing them does not rewrite existing plans.
6. Review regimes and boundaries. On Regimes, confirm each distance band, whether it is measured from land or the safety contour, and the guidance printed on the passage sheet. On Boundaries, select the 1, 3, 12, 24, and 200 NM lines the vessel uses for generated boundary waypoints.
7. Verify the setup. Create a short test Draft and confirm that its speed, XTD, and turn radius match the ship's defaults. Check the ENC display, run AUTO REGIMES and ROUTE CHECK, and compare the result with the vessel's certified ECDIS and approved procedures before the crew begins operational planning.

Quick Start

Create, check, submit, and export a route on a vessel that has completed Initial Ship Setup.

1. Sign in and confirm your vessel. Use email and password or Sign in with Google. Confirm that the correct vessel appears in the header. If you need an account, see Requesting access; an administrator must approve it and assign a vessel and role.
2. Create the route. Select + New route… in the Layers panel, or open the Library's Routes tab and select New route. Name the route, then click the chart to add waypoints.
3. Set the plan. In the route editor, enter leg speeds or use DEFAULT SPD, set XTD and turn radii, and add any stops or fixed ETAs. Select Solve to calculate the schedule. A feasible result confirms that the entered time and speed constraints can be met; it is not a navigation clearance.
4. Review the chart and references. Turn on ENC chart in the Basemap card and choose the depth presentation in Chart display. Load any needed sea-ice, survey, bathymetry, or vessel-track references from Library > Resources.
5. Classify and check the route. AUTO REGIMES replaces the route's regime entries using the vessel configuration. ROUTE CHECK checks each leg's XTD corridor against charted shallow water, land, dangers, and linked danger objects, working to the vessel's safety contour, and lists the charted areas the route runs through as warnings. Select a result to show it on the chart.
6. File and submit it. File the Draft through the Library or select Submit for approval from the route editor. If the route is not in a ship library, the submit dialog asks you to choose one so the CO can see it. The CO reviews the Submitted route and approves or rejects it. Use Copy link when another person with access needs to open the same route; the link does not grant access.
7. Export to the ECDIS. Select the route in the Library and use Export RTZ. Linked overlay groups are offered with the route; every ship's overlays offer both Furuno user-chart XML and Wärtsilä AIZ from the Export ▾ menu, whichever handoff your own bridge produces most often leading as the quick button. Import the files on the bridge and run the certified ECDIS's own route check before navigational use.

Welcome, what's new, and the help dialog

The very first time you sign in on a brand-new account, Plotroom shows a Welcome to Plotroom dialog — a short introduction plus buttons to open this documentation and, if the fleet has one configured, to support Plotroom. On every later sign-in, if any releases have shipped since you were last in the app, you instead get a What's new dialog listing what changed release by release.

You can revisit the same release history at any time from the ? button at the very bottom of the icon rail, just below the Personnel person icon. It opens a help dialog with a pinned header — the current version, its release date, and an Open documentation button — above a scrollable release-notes history; each past release collapses to its version and date, with the newest one expanded.

The same dialog carries a Send feedback entry. It opens a short form — a category, a text description, and an optional screenshot, either an image you attach, one captured on the spot, or one pasted straight from your clipboard (Ctrl + V anywhere in the form takes a copied image — a Print Screen or a snip — as the attachment). The category preselects based on what you were actually doing: an open takeover — the voyage log, the Library panel, the Route Finder, Weather View, or Chart display — takes priority; otherwise the tides panel, while it shows, sets Tides & Currents Module; editing a route sets Route Editing; and panning, zooming, clicking, or drawing on the chart sets Map View; failing those, the Layers panel sets its own category if you last worked in it, and general otherwise — and you're free to change it before sending. The category stays tied to that surface while you pass through Help. Close Chart display and open Help as your next action to report on those settings; choosing another control or interacting with the map first returns to the current surface's category. Capturing a screenshot may prompt you to choose which window or tab to share. If you decline, Plotroom captures the chart when possible. An attached image previews inside the form, scrolled into view so you can confirm it is the right one. Administrators can review the report and update its status.

A report can also carry files — routes, exports, or logs from your own systems that help reproduce what you are describing (an RTZ or CSV that imports wrong, for example). Attach files… takes up to five files of any type, 10 MB each and 15 MB per report; each appears in the form with its size and a remove control until you send.

On desktop, the form opens at a size that shows its category, description, screenshot, and attachments without scrolling. Drag it by its title bar to move it out of the way of what you are reporting on, drag its lower-right corner to resize it, or minimize it into a small restore control in the app header while you keep working; the moved position and size are remembered on this device. Your text, selected category, attached screenshot, and any unsent error stay with the draft until you send it or choose to discard it. Discarding asks you to confirm first, so closing the form never loses what you wrote by accident.

Administrators also see View feedback. The review list opens on the reports not yet looked at — only New is checked — and widens to the other statuses with their checkboxes. Use Category independently to show all categories or one stored category. It shows each report's category, submitter, time, description, screenshot, and attached files — each file is a download link with its size. Use the status menu or the bulk actions to mark the displayed reports reviewed or addressed; a bulk action applies only to the displayed status-and-category scope and confirms first, naming how many reports it will change. Download .zip downloads the filtered reports, their screenshots, and their attached files for offline review.

Administrators also get a daily email digest of feedback submitted the previous day, grouped by category — it's skipped entirely on a day with nothing to report.

Requesting access

From the sign-in screen, choose Create an account. Enter your email, first and last name, and a password of at least 12 characters.

Follow the verification link sent to your email, then confirm your password. If your fleet offers Google sign-in, you may instead choose Request with Google; the Google account is already verified.

Your account remains pending until an administrator approves it. While pending, sign in to choose your vessel and requested duty role. The Ship / vessel dropdown lists the fleet's existing ships, or choose Other / new vessel… at the bottom of it to name a vessel that is not yet listed. These are requests: the administrator confirms the vessel and assigns the final role. Choose Send request; you can use Change vessel or role while approval is pending. Plotroom emails you when access is approved. Until then, no fleet data is visible.

The role list includes Scientist and Chief Scientist alongside the vessel roles, for science-party members who plan alongside a ship rather than serving on it (see Roles). Ask for one the same way. Science personnel hold no primary vessel, so the ship you name is a hint for the administrator, who assigns the role and picks the ships you'll be associated with when they approve the account.

Map view

The chart is the center of the app — everything else opens around it.

Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to pan, and use the +/− control at the bottom right. A live latitude/longitude readout tracks the cursor in the chart's bottom-left corner in your chosen Coordinate format — decimal degrees, degrees and minutes, or degrees, minutes and seconds — which you set in Your profile and which follows your account to any machine. While you draw, it sits beside the DRAW card. While the route editor or the Tides and currents panel is open along the bottom of the chart, the readout moves to the chart's top-left corner so it never covers the table or the graph. A Comments, Route Check or chart-pick card moved over it, or placed there on a narrow window, covers it. The readout disappears when the pointer leaves the map; it is not shown on phones, in Weather View or in Route Finder.

The cursor itself tells you what a click will do. Over anything a click answers with information it becomes a question-mark pointer: a live vessel position, and — while its own row is selected in the layers panel — the vessel track, a vector Web Layer, a Planned Surveys (OCS) project, or a sea-ice area. Selecting the row is what puts those layers on the hook: it keeps a reference layer from answering a click meant for the overlay you are working on.

Saving the view as an image

The camera button in the top bar captures what the chart is showing and opens a Map screenshot preview of the capture. Three buttons along its foot cover every use:

• Copy to clipboard puts the picture on your clipboard, ready to paste into an email, a chat message, or a document; a "Copied" note confirms it. In a browser that cannot take an image onto the clipboard, the button says so and points you at Save PNG instead.
• Save PNG downloads the previewed picture — for a briefing slide, an email attachment, or a night order.
• Save GeoTIFF writes the view to a .tif that carries its position: opened in a GIS it lands on the correct part of the earth rather than as a loose picture. The file is written in Web Mercator (EPSG:3857), the projection the chart is drawn in. It is an image of the screen, not chart data — it is for reference and reporting, never a substitute for the official chart.

Save GeoTIFF is available only while the chart is north-up and level. A rotated or tilted view is not a north-up image, and writing one as though it were would place it wrongly, so the button stays visible but greyed with that reason on hover — straighten the chart (north-up, no tilt) and it becomes available.

Basemaps and the ENC chart

The map card offers OSM Street, OSM Dark, Topographic, and Satellite basemaps, plus an ENC chart checkbox. OSM Dark gives a dark base for a darkened bridge and is dimmed by Chart dim like the other basemaps; it is offered when the deployment has a CARTO basemap key, and a saved view that names it shows OSM Street where there is none. Plotroom draws the NOAA ENC data using familiar ECDIS-style colours and symbols, including depth areas, soundings, aids to navigation, lights, hazards, routeing measures, restrictions, land detail, and charted names.

Chart detail changes as you zoom. Overview charts cover the wider area, then give way to more detailed coastal and harbour charts at their intended scales — each chart scale arrives at the zoom level matching its compilation scale, so the scale estimate on the map card closely tracks the chart actually being shown, and the most detailed harbour charts render with a full native zoom level of sharpness. Buoys, beacons and lights stay drawn through the zoom where one chart hands over to the next, rather than dropping out for a fraction of a zoom level in between. Charts that continue through the 180° meridian draw their charted content on both sides of the dateline, and a maritime zone's boundary draws where the zone actually ends — never along a chart's own edge.

Chart choice: ENC or Seamap

The Chart checkbox on the map card turns the chart on and off. While it is on, the ENC | Seamap control beside it chooses which chart is drawn: Plotroom's own NOAA ENC portrayal, or Open Waters Seamap, a nautical-styled chart built from OpenStreetMap seamarks and lights over shaded depths, contours, and soundings. The two never draw together, and your choice returns wherever you saved or shared this view.

While Seamap is chosen, the Day, Dusk, and Night palette control, Source quality, and the Scale ≈ 1:[number] readout are not shown — those describe the ENC chart. Chart dim, the All and Land only transparency control, Chart display, and every basemap choice, including None (chart only), keep working exactly as they do for the ENC chart. Right-click and choose Pick chart features to read Seamap's seamarks, lights, depth areas, soundings, and contours at a position, the same way the ENC chart's pick report works. On a phone or narrow tablet, the chart chip reads ENC or Seamap with a check or a cross for on/off, and a second chip beside it switches to the other chart while the chart is on.

Chart display opens the same way while Seamap is chosen — the icon-rail button, or the mobile CHART chip — but shows only Depth and safety. Its mode row reads Seamap, 4-shade, 2-shade, and Unsafe: Seamap keeps Open Waters' own colours, contours, and sounding tints, and the other three shade Seamap's depth areas the same way the ENC chart does (see Depth display) — banded at your shallow, safety, and deep contours, with a bold safety-contour line snapped to the nearest depth line Seamap draws (0, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50, 100, or 200 metres), bold soundings at or shallower than your safety depth, and, in Unsafe, the same red emphasis over water that does not clearly exceed the safety contour. At small scale the depth bands still show even where the bold contour line has dropped out; finer contours, including the safety line, draw in as you zoom in. The chosen mode returns wherever you saved or shared this view, and on a phone or narrow tablet a depth-mode chip cycles all four modes.

If Open Waters stops answering, Seamap in the chart control turns red for up to an hour; hover it to read the reason and the time Plotroom will try again. Turn the chart off and back on, or switch chart and switch back, to retry right away.

Palette, transparency, and basemap

Day, Dusk, and Night set the chart palette independently of the app's theme. Use All transparency to fade the entire chart — the Source quality colouring, when on, fades with it — down to a 5% minimum (for no chart at all, uncheck the ENC chart instead), or Land only to reveal roads, terrain, or imagery ashore while keeping the water, chart symbols, and names fully visible. Land only fades every charted area that is not water — glaciers and other ice areas included. Both fade evenly. While the chart is below 100%, a faint line of basemap may show along a chart join; it closes at 100%. The map card's live scale estimate reads as a single line, Scale ≈ 1:[number].

While the ENC chart is on, the basemap list also offers None (chart only). This shows the ENC chart without loading a basemap, which can reduce data use on a limited connection. Turning the ENC chart off restores your previous basemap.

Chart dim lowers the brightness of the ENC chart and basemap. The slider runs from full brightness down to 10%, far enough to take the chart back to a faint backdrop on a darkened bridge. Reference layers placed above the chart, such as bathymetry or ice, remain at their selected brightness, and the safety contour remains prominent.

Chart detail and scale

Plotroom selects the most detailed NOAA chart appropriate for each part of the view. An ocean-passage view shows prominent features; coastal, approach, and harbour detail appears as you zoom in. Coastline, land, and depth areas remain visible at wider scales, while local features such as bridge clearances and traffic-lane arrows appear with the chart detail they belong to. Use the map card's Scale ≈ 1:[number] line to judge the displayed scale. Load the NOAA rendering comparison layer below to compare the same area with NOAA's portrayal.

A charted name and the symbol it belongs to arrive together. A town or village circle rides its own name — the pair draws (and is hidden by label crowding) as one, so a name is never left standing over open ground and circles no longer blanket wide views where their labels could not fit. Settlement circles also shrink at overview zooms and grow to full size approaching the chart's native scale. A named summit keeps its terrain symbol at every zoom its name shows. Unnamed points keep their own charted zoom, and turning names off under Chart display returns every symbol to it.

NOAA-rendered comparison layer

NOAA ENC chart (NOAA rendering), under the library's Resources → Web Layers tab (it is a live chart service, like Planned Surveys), shows NOAA's own portrayal of the ENC data. Load it when you want to compare an unfamiliar symbol, depth, name, or area with NOAA's presentation; on the map it appears under Resources in the layers panel like the other reference layers. It is a comparison layer, not the chart used by Plotroom's planning tools; the ENC chart checkbox remains the normal chart display.

NOAA Raster Chart Portrayal (OCS) sits beside it on the same tab and draws the other NOAA picture of the same waters: the traditional paper-chart plate, with magenta caution and cable areas, soundings in the units the chart was drawn in, and the familiar typography. Load it when the question is what the paper chart shows — comparing an unfamiliar area against a paper chart or a scanned one — and the ENC rendering when the question is how NOAA draws the electronic data. It covers the same US waters and draws at every scale.

Source quality

Turn on Source quality to colour the chart by survey confidence, from green for the strongest assessed data through amber and red to grey for unassessed areas. A key appears below the control while it is on. Turn it off when you want the normal depth colours.

Source quality is an aid to judging the charted data, not a safety assessment by Plotroom. Right-click and choose Pick chart features to read the charted quality zone, sounding method, and survey dates at a position, whether or not the overlay is visible.

Depth display

Open Chart display from the icon rail to choose one of three depth presentations:

• 4-shade uses the shallow, safety, and deep contours to divide the chart into four depth bands.
• 2-shade shows the main distinction between water shallower and deeper than the safety contour.
• Unsafe keeps the depth bands and adds red and amber emphasis where the charted water does not clearly exceed the safety contour.

The safety contour is drawn as a bold line in every mode. Depth data is part of the ENC chart, so there is no separate depth-area loading step. AUTO REGIMES, ROUTE CHECK, and MARPOL waypoints all read the same chart data, always at the most detailed chart available for each area, and report an incomplete result rather than a clear one when chart data for part of a route is unavailable.

Display contours and vessel safety values

If chart information cannot load, the basemap and your loaded layers remain usable, but chart detail may be unavailable. Choose Retry in the chart message to try again without changing your view.

Shallow, Safety, and Deep set the contours used to colour your chart, in metres. Enter a value and press Tab or Enter. Press Esc while one of these fields is focused to discard the uncommitted value without closing Chart display. These display settings follow your account and are not replaced by a saved or shared view. The chart draws the charted contour your Safety value snaps to as its bold line, so the bold line on screen may sit at the nearest charted depth rather than exactly on the number you typed.

Display contours do not change the vessel's safety configuration. Route Check and Auto Regimes continue to work to the active route vessel's configured Safety contour, never to the values set here.

Safety depth is a fourth box beside Shallow, Safety and Deep, and it does a different job from them: it sets which soundings stand out. A depth figure shallower than the Safety depth prints bold, one deeper than it prints grey (dimmed further by Make safe soundings dimmer). It does not move the Safety contour — the bold contour line and the depth shading stay on the Safety value above it. Your ship carries a default: the Safety depth on Ship configuration → Safety seeds this box, and you can change it here for your own chart without touching the vessel's setting. Left unset, the Safety depth follows the Safety contour, so the same value controls the bold contour and sounding emphasis.

Make safe soundings dimmer reduces the emphasis of soundings deeper than the safety depth. Label depth contours prints the contour value along each line.

Always show soundings, directly under it, keeps spot soundings drawn as you zoom out. Every chart sets a scale below which each sounding is meant to drop away, which is why a harbour full of figures empties as you pull back towards passage scale; turn this on and the soundings ignore that limit and draw at every scale the chart carries them at. Thinning by density still applies, shoalest figure first, so a crowded survey fills in rather than turning solid. It is off in both standard setups, so switching it on reads as Custom, and it travels with the rest of the display settings into saved views and share links. It is an ENC control: the Seamap chart's Chart display does not offer it.

Danger marks

Rocks, wrecks, and obstructions are always drawn with their charted symbols. Isolated danger marks controls the additional magenta ECDIS mark. Shallow water dangers extends that mark to dangers within the safety contour for close-in or survey work. Turning the marks off does not hide the underlying hazards.

Chart display settings

Chart display on the icon rail opens the full portrayal controls. Use it to select feature groups, symbols, boundaries, text, light-sector detail, depth presentation, and display contours. The dialog keeps its labels short; this page carries the full explanation of what each control does.

Standard setups

• Clean is the minimal, uncluttered chart view: lights, buoys/beacons/structures, and place names are off, along with isolated danger marks, soundings, cables and pipelines, seabed information, tidal information, contour labels, and the three restriction/precaution/caution area families. Depth contours, the routeing scheme (traffic lanes and archipelagic sea lanes), boundaries and limits, and simplified point symbols stay on. It's the same view Route Finder and Weather View apply to their own chart while either is open, restoring what you had on exit.
• Planning default adds the detail commonly needed while preparing a passage, including soundings, cables and pipelines, seabed information, tidal information, contour labels, light descriptions, and miscellaneous land detail such as buildings, forts, coast guard stations and landmarks. Clean leaves that land detail off.
• Show all features temporarily reveals every available feature group when you are looking for a charted item.

Changing an individual setting makes the setup Custom. Select a setup again to reapply it. Setups do not change the chart palette, display contours, or Source quality — nor the depth presentation (4-shade / 2-shade / Unsafe) chosen above under Depth display, which is your own account setting, not part of either setup.

Feature groups

The Chart detail list lets you show or hide named groups such as aids to navigation, lights, soundings, depth contours, boundaries, restricted areas, routeing systems, cables and pipelines, seabed information, tidal information, magnetic variation, and place names. A control is greyed when the chart does not provide that group separately.

Hiding a group also hides its labels and removes it from Pick chart features. Coastlines, the safety contour, rocks, wrecks, and obstructions remain visible because they are fundamental to reading the chart.

Caution areas controls both area-boundary caution marks and point-form caution marks. The separate Cautionary notes row is greyed because this chart does not provide another independently controlled caution family.

Show chart-scale notice areas sits directly under Caution areas and is off in both standard setups. Some caution areas carry no warning about the water at all: their note only says that the chart is drawn at a scale which omits detail, and the result is a large boxed area over water that other charts show in full. Left unticked, those areas are kept off the chart. Tick it and they draw with every other caution area. A caution area that says something about the water — shoaling, a fishing ground, an exercise area — is never affected either way. The row follows the group above it, so it is greyed while Caution areas is off.

Symbols, boundaries, and extra information

Point symbols chooses Simplified screen symbols or Paper chart symbols. Area boundaries chooses plain dashed edges or symbolized boundaries whose marks identify the area and point inward. Continuous areas and maritime zones appear as one shape across chart joins. Picking one outlines the full area. Traffic-lane arrows and restriction marks remain with the lane or area they describe as you change scale.

Restriction and information marks draws those marks — the information “i”, the no-anchoring, entry- and fishing-restricted, caution and similar symbols placed inside areas. Turning it off declutters a busy chart without removing the areas themselves: their boundaries, tints, and text stay, they remain pickable, and anchorage, swept-area, precautionary, and traffic symbols are unaffected.

Highlight objects carrying extra information outlines features with attached chart notes in cyan, distinguishing Plotroom's highlight from charted colours. Pick the feature to read the note.

Text and lights

Chart text is the master text control. Its subordinate choices cover important text, names, light descriptions, and other chart text. A swept area prints its charted swept depth once beside the swept-area mark; hiding important text removes the depth figure without hiding the mark. Draw sector leg lines adds the lines joining a sectored light to its sector arcs. A light's flare (the coloured teardrop on a buoy or fixed aid) points down and to the right at 135° from north, as on paper charts and an ECDIS; when two lights share one position, the white, yellow, or orange flare is drawn at 45° so the two stay apart, and a directional light's flare points along its charted direction.

Restore all defaults

Restore all defaults returns the detailed portrayal controls to Planning default. It leaves the palette, personal contour values, and map-card controls unchanged.

Browsing, editing, drawing, themes, and dimming

The chart is always doing one of three things. Browsing is the default: a click reads or selects what is under it. While you edit a route, the route editor is open along the bottom and a click adds or moves that route's waypoints. While you draw, one overlay is open for editing and the DRAW card carries its tools.

• Edit a route: select it and choose Edit route on its card (Review edit for a CO reviewing a submission), or right-click the route on the chart and choose Edit route "<name>". A route you may only read offers View route details instead, which opens the same table read-only. See Opening the editor.
• Draw on an overlay: select it and choose Edit overlay on its card, or right-click one of its objects and choose Edit overlay "<group name>" (Edit overlay ▸ where several overlays overlap).
• Start something new: + New route… and + New overlay… in the Layers panel prompt for a name and open the new route or overlay for editing. The Library's New route does the same; its New overlay files the new overlay without opening it.
• Return to browsing: Done editing on the route or overlay card, Close route details for a read-only route, ✕ on the editor, or Done on the DRAW card.

Esc backs out of a placement or entry without committing it.

Your theme — Day, Night, or Auto (follows your device's light/dark setting) — is set in your profile and applies across the whole app, not just the map; see Settings & profile. The chart's own colours do not follow it — they have their own Day / Dusk / Night control on the map card. That control stays reachable over menus and popups, and dims with the rest of the interface while a dialog is open; close the dialog to use it again.

Right-click menus and share links

Right-click the chart for a context menu of what you can do at that spot. While browsing, it reads from the top:

1. Pick chart features, which reports what the chart shows there (see Pick chart features below).
2. Forecast at this point and Tides and currents here (below).
3. Entries for what lies under the pointer: Add comment on the active route's waypoint, Edit overlay "<group name>" on an overlay object, and Edit route "<name>" on a route.
4. New Divider, New VRM and New EBL (see Bridge tools), each showing its key, D, V or E, at the right of the entry.
5. Copy coordinates… (see Copy coordinates).

While you edit a route, the menu also leads with Pick chart features, then offers the editing actions for the spot you clicked: on a waypoint, Add comment, Edit name and Delete Waypoint (a boundary waypoint offers only the comment); on the route's line, Insert waypoint here, which splits the leg under the cursor — the drawn line is what counts, so on a great-circle leg the arc decides which leg receives the waypoint, not the straight chord between its waypoints; elsewhere, Add waypoint here and Add waypoint by coordinates…, which opens the coordinate dialog at the clicked position and appends the typed position, or a whole pasted list of positions, to the end of the route as one step (one undo). The divider, VRM and EBL entries and Copy coordinates… follow, so the bridge tools stay within reach without leaving the editor. An existing bridge tool's marker responds to right-click with its own set and delete options, plus Copy coordinates…, instead.

The menu stays inside the visible map. If space is limited, scroll within the menu to reach its remaining actions; the clicked position stays the same.

Forecast at this point follows Pick chart features in the Browse menu, under the same sun-and-cloud glyph as the top bar's Weather button, and takes you from the chart straight to the weather where you clicked. Weather View opens with that position already picked — its pin on the map and its own strip in the bottom timeline from the first frame — and the chart stays on the view you right-clicked in rather than returning to wherever Weather View was last left. Whatever route was chosen there is still chosen and drawn beside the point, which is listed as Single point, so one spot can be read against the voyage; with no route chosen, the point is all there is. The entry is offered while browsing and on bare chart while overlay objects are being selected. The menu while a route is being edited keeps to editing actions and leaves it out, as does the menu while a drawing tool is armed and the menus belonging to an overlay object or a bridge-tool marker; return to Browse to open the weather at a point. The same entry sits on Weather View's own right-click menu, where it moves the picked point without disturbing the route or sketch on screen — see Picking a point.

Tides and currents here follows it in the same two menus and opens Tides and currents for the clicked spot: on the only station within 50 nautical miles, or, when there are several, after you choose one from the nearest (see Stations on the chart). The route-editing menu leaves it out as well.

Right-click directly on an overlay object — a point, line, area, circle, or label, whichever group it belongs to — and the menu offers Edit overlay "<group name>". Choosing it opens that overlay group for editing, which is the quickest way to find out which overlay a stray point or shape on the chart actually came from. Editing an overlay that is loaded but unchecked in the layers panel checks it first, so what you edit is on the chart while you work.

Where objects of several overlays overlap under the pointer, the menu offers Edit overlay ▸ instead. Select it to list each overlay at that spot, then choose the one to edit. An overlay you cannot edit at the moment, such as one someone else is editing, is greyed out; point at it to read why.

Right-click a loaded route's line, or the active route's waypoints, and the menu offers Edit route "<name>". Choosing it makes that route the active one and opens it for editing when you are allowed to edit it, and opens its route details read-only when you are not — the same rule the route card's own buttons follow. This works on the active route too, so the editor is one right-click away with the Layers panel closed. While someone else is editing that route the entry is greyed out and names the holder. Where another loaded route crosses the active one, the entry names the other route; right-click the active route elsewhere along its line. The entry is left off for the active route while its read-only details are already open, and the menu while you edit a route keeps to editing actions.

Copy coordinates

The chart's right-click menu carries a Copy coordinates… entry that copies a position as text. On the open map — in Browse mode, or with an object selected — it takes the spot you clicked; right-clicking an overlay object takes its nearest corner point exactly, and right-clicking a route waypoint takes the waypoint itself — the charted position, not the pixel your cursor happened to land on.

A bridge tool carries the entry too, below its own set and delete options, in Browse mode and while editing a route alike. On a VRM's centre, an EBL's origin, or a divider vertex it copies that exact position; elsewhere along the ring or the line it copies the spot you clicked.

Choosing it opens a small dialog with the spelling choices: decimal degrees (DD), degrees-minutes (DDM), or degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS); N/S/E/W letters or plain +/− signs; and whether to include the ° ′ ″ marks or write the parts bare. A preview above the Copy to Clipboard button shows exactly what will be copied. Your choices are remembered on this device, and every spelling — marks or no marks — pastes straight back into Plotroom's own coordinate fields: the route table's Lat/Lon cells, the coordinate-entry dialog, or a pasted list.

Pick chart features

Right-click and choose Pick chart features to inspect what the chart shows at that position. The card groups overlapping features and presents their charted attributes in plain language: shapes and colours, light characteristics, depths and clearances, seabed, restrictions, survey quality, and other available details. Seabed samples draw on the chart as the standard abbreviations (fS fine sand, R.Lv rock over lava); the pick report spells the same nature out in words.

Each result's collapsed line carries the most useful thing the chart says about that feature. A feature with a charted name shows its name. Every other feature shows its own chart reading, written exactly as the expanded table writes it: a rock, wreck or obstruction gives its least depth, or how it covers and uncovers; a depth area gives its range, a contour or sounding its depth; a light gives its character, colour, period and range; a buoy or beacon gives its category and colours; a patch of seabed gives its nature; a restricted or anchorage area gives what it is; a caution area gives the opening of its note. Where the chart offers none of those, the line falls back to the feature's first charted detail, and to the compilation scale only when the chart says nothing else about it at all. Expand the row for the full attribute table, which is unchanged.

The band above the results identifies the ENC cell being displayed at that scale. Select it to see the chart title, scale, edition, update information, and coverage boundary when available. The amber boundary retains the parts already loaded and extends as you pan along the cell.

Select a linked chart note to read its full text, including tables. When a note is unavailable, the card says so; there is no action to retry. Picking a new position closes the previous position's note before showing the new results. A danger carrying the magenta isolated-danger mark also states which safety contour caused the mark. Picking a magnetic-variation arrow (shown when Magnetic variation is turned on under Chart display) reports the variation value, its reference year, and the annual change.

Hover over or expand a result to outline that feature on the chart. An area that continues unchanged across a chart border is outlined as one whole area, not just the part on the chart under the pick. Maritime limits such as the territorial sea, contiguous zone, and Exclusive Economic Zone answer only when the visible limit line is under the pick, not from the water enclosed by the limit. Picking remains available while editing a route or overlay and does not change the current mode or selection.

The report normally lists only displayed feature groups. If an expected item is absent, turn its group on in Chart display or use Show all features, then pick again. Survey-quality information remains available even when the Source quality overlay is off.

Share links

A route, overlay or raster link adds its item to the chart you already have and fits the chart to it; everything else you had loaded stays. A route link makes the route active. A raster link also applies the sender's display settings to that raster (see Sharing, renaming, and other actions). If you have several saved views, Plotroom may first ask which view should provide that starting chart setup.

A share or review link never grants access. The recipient must sign in with an account that can already see the route, overlay or raster. A readable overlay link can open an overlay filed on another ship even when that overlay is absent from your Library listings. A raster link opens only a raster your Library lists; otherwise it reports Raster not found. Opening a link does not add the item to your libraries or change your editing rights.

Comments

The Comments rail icon opens a floating panel of every comment on the active route, newest open threads first, with an open-count badge on the icon itself. Add one from the panel's own field (a route-level comment) or right-click a waypoint on the chart to target that waypoint specifically; either way the comment records who wrote it, their role, and when. Use Reply to add a one-level response below the original comment. Replies keep the original route, leg, or waypoint target; Resolve / Reopen applies to the whole discussion, and replying to a resolved discussion reopens it without deleting its history.

Clicking a comment in the list (its body, not the Resolve button) centers the chart on whatever it's anchored to — the waypoint itself for a waypoint comment, or the leg's starting waypoint for a leg comment — so you can jump straight to what's being discussed. A route-level comment has no map anchor and isn't clickable this way.

An open discussion keeps itself current. While a route's comments are on screen — the panel, the rail badge's open count, or the comment markers on the chart — Plotroom re-reads that route's comments about every half minute, and again when you come back to the Plotroom tab, so a reply written at another station appears without reloading the page. Only the comment list is refreshed: a route you are editing keeps its waypoints, its unsaved changes, and its undo history exactly as they were, and the refresh never changes which route is active. A comment you post yourself still appears the moment it is saved, and a hidden tab isn't polled at all.

Comments belong to the review, not the finished plan: while a route is Approved, its comments are hidden for everyone — the panel notes that they are hidden rather than listing them, no comment markers draw on the chart, and no new comment can be added. Nothing is deleted: unlocking the route back to Draft brings the whole discussion back intact.

Bridge tools

Dividers, VRM, and EBL — familiar ECDIS-style aids for measuring and planning on Plotroom's chart.

These measuring aids are separate from routes and overlays. They are not exported and do not affect route checks, but they are saved with your account for your next sign-in.

Start each one from the chart's right-click menu, or from the keyboard: D for New Divider, V for New VRM and E for New EBL. A key does exactly what its menu entry does — V and E first ask for the range or bearing — and the next click on the chart places the tool; Esc cancels. The keys work while browsing and while editing a route; pressed with the right-click menu open, a key closes the menu and starts its tool. They do nothing while you type in a field or dialog, while a popup on the chart or the NOAA catalog is open, while drawing on an overlay, in Weather or Route Finder, while a divider is being laid down or a bridge tool dragged, or with Ctrl, Alt or Cmd held.

VRM and EBL

Right-click the chart and choose New VRM or New EBL, or press V or E; a dialog asks for a starting range (VRM) or bearing (EBL, in degrees true), then click the chart to place it. The range dialog carries an NM | m toggle — the same shared unit the divider reads in, so switching it here switches the divider too, and a value already typed converts with it. The VRM's ring label, its placement readout, and the range dialog all follow the chosen unit (metres read as whole numbers). Once placed, drag a VRM ring's edge to resize it or its center to move it; drag an EBL's line to re-angle it or its origin to move it. Right-click an existing VRM or EBL for Set range… / Set bearing… (type an exact value) or Delete, and for Copy coordinates… — on the VRM's centre or the EBL's origin that copies the tool's own position exactly, and elsewhere on the ring or line the spot you clicked.

Dragging any bridge tool — a VRM ring or center, an EBL line or origin, or a divider vertex — arms a one-step undo: an undo button appears in the icon rail naming the move (Undo: VRM move), and Ctrl + Z does the same. Bridge tools remain draggable while editing a route. Undo always follows the latest action: a bridge-tool drag contributes one undo move, then earlier route edits are next in the history. Where a route waypoint handle overlaps a bridge tool, the route handle keeps the drag and Ctrl-click-delete interaction.

Divider

Right-click and choose New Divider, or press D, then click to lay down each leg. Enter or a right-click finishes the divider (it commits once it has two or more vertices); Esc cancels the placement. Backspace removes the last vertex you placed — at the first vertex, it cancels the placement instead. Each leg is labelled like a route leg: the true course (057.3°T) rides above the line and the distance, with its unit (12.4 NM), below, both turned to follow the leg. The running total sits at the end of the line, distance only (Σ 18.2 NM); a leg too short on screen to carry its text — including the one still under your cursor — simply goes unlabelled until you zoom in. Press U at any time to flip the distance readout between nautical miles and metres — one shared choice, remembered on this device, that the VRM's ring label and range dialog follow too. Right-click a placed divider to delete a single vertex (once it has more than two) or the whole divider, or for Copy coordinates… — on a vertex that copies the vertex exactly, elsewhere on the line the spot you clicked.

Extending a divider

Right-click the last vertex of a placed divider and choose Extend divider to carry on measuring from there. It behaves exactly like laying a new divider: click to add each leg, the course and distance labels and the running total continue over the legs you already had, U still flips the unit, and Enter or a right-click finishes. The new legs join the same divider rather than starting a second one. Backspace takes back the legs you have just added — with none left it cancels the extension — and Esc, or switching to route or overlay editing, leaves the divider exactly as it was. After finishing, one Ctrl + Z (or the undo button in the icon rail) removes what you added.

Layers panel

Everything currently on the map, grouped and controllable from one collapsible list on the right.

The top button in the icon rail at the left of the chart, Map, closes the Library or Voyage log full-screen panel and returns you to the chart — it isn't a toggle and carries no active state of its own. The button below it, Layers, is the toggle that opens and closes this panel. Below Layers the rail continues with Library, Route Finder, Voyage log, Weather, Tides & currents and Comments. Route Finder and Voyage log appear only for the roles that use them (see Route Finder and Voyage log); without them the buttons below move up, so on a science account Weather follows Library.

The panel is organized into sections — Routes, Resources, Raster layers, Overlays, Vessel tracks, and Ship positions — each with its own collapse arrow. A section's open/closed state is remembered on this device, and a section with nothing in it simply doesn't appear (Ship positions is the exception: a single fleet-wide toggle, always shown even with nothing loaded). All layers / In map view, above the sections, switches between every loaded layer and only the routes, overlays, vessel tracks, raster layers and web layers whose extent overlaps the chart; each button shows its count. Planned Surveys, LNM notices, ship positions and layers with no extent, such as a route without waypoints or a raster still processing, are always listed. The Routes section shows a "+N more in library (out of view)" link when there are loaded routes the filter is hiding.

Drag the grip on the panel's left edge to resize it; the width is remembered on this device.

If an action fails, its error message appears near the top of Layers. Select the message's ✕ to dismiss it, or leave it to clear after two minutes. Repeating a failed action gives the message a fresh two minutes. Dismissing it does not retry the action.

A Resources reference layer or a raster web layer whose service keeps failing (a NOAA outage, for example, or a server that stops answering) is paused, and taken off the chart, so it cannot slow every other layer down. Its name turns red in the panel; hover it to read the reason and the time the app will try again, and the same line appears in the layer's detail card. Most layers stay paused for an hour. A web layer that Plotroom fetches on your behalf pauses for 5 minutes, or as long as its service asks, and a second line under its name counts the pause down — Upstream unavailable · retrying in 4 min. When the count runs out, Plotroom puts the layer back on the chart and tries the service again; while it checks whether the service has recovered, the layer's tiles can take up to half a minute to arrive.

Unchecking a paused layer ends the pause; check it again to retry right away. A brief connection dropout does not pause a layer, and neither do tiles the service reports as missing, such as an area it has no imagery for; only a service that keeps answering with an error, or keeps timing out, does.

Find box and search

On smaller screens, long vessel, saved-view and profile names in the top bar are shortened to leave room for its controls. Hover over a shortened name to read it in full.

The header's Find box (Ctrl + F jumps to it from the desktop, with no text field focused) filters the panel's own sections down to rows whose name matches what you've typed — routes, overlays, and vessel tracks, wherever they're already loaded. The Resources section's reference rasters, the RASTER LAYERS section's custom uploads, and the WEB LAYERS section narrow the same way, and the live Planned Surveys (OCS) row counts as a match on its name too — a section with nothing left matching simply disappears, same as when it has nothing loaded at all. While there's text in the box, a SEARCH section also appears below the panel's regular sections, listing name matches from everything you can open in the Library but haven't loaded yet — routes, overlays, rasters (both your own uploads and the reference collection), Planned Surveys (OCS), web layers, and vessel tracks — each result tagged with its type. The list caps at roughly ten results, with an "N more…" note when there are more matches than that. While the box holds text, an ✕ at its right end clears it and leaves the cursor in the box. Clicking a search result clears the search and loads that layer onto the map. A ROUTE result also becomes the active route, exactly as if you had clicked its row: its card opens and the chart fits to it. If you are editing a different route, that editing closes and the chart returns to browsing; choose Edit route on the card to edit the route you found. Every other kind of result loads without moving the chart or changing what is selected.

Typing two or more letters also opens a Chart features list under the box: charted places from the NOAA chart set whose name matches, such as harbours, named sea areas, lights, buoys, beacons and landmarks. Each row shows what the feature is, its state, and how far and in what direction it lies from the middle of the screen; features already on screen come first, then the closest name matches, then the nearest. Use the arrow keys or the mouse and press Enter or click: the chart moves there and rings the feature for a few seconds. An area or a named stretch of water is framed by its own extent, so a sea area or a harbour arrives whole rather than centred on a point, while a light, buoy or beacon is approached at a readable scale. Where the chart set draws one area as a whole piece plus a few slivers, the list offers it once, framed to everything that belongs to it. Places that merely share a name are a different matter and stay separate rows, each with its own state and its own position: type Deer Island and the one on screen in Alaska is listed first, with the Oregon, Mississippi and Louisiana namesakes below it and the state after each name telling them apart. Only pieces lying together on the chart are merged. Clicking away closes the list and leaves the text in the box for the panel filter; Esc closes the list and leaves the text as well. The list appears only on the main map view (not in Weather View, Route Finder or the Library), on desktop. The name index is rebuilt with every chart update, so it stays current; if the chart set in use has not carried one yet, the list stays hidden. It searches the NOAA chart set whichever chart or basemap is displayed.

Show/hide vs. load/unload

The checkbox on a layers-panel row is a show/hide switch: unchecking it hides the layer but leaves it loaded, so re-checking it is instant. This is a different control from the checkbox on the same item's row in the Library panel, which is load/unload — unchecking it there removes the layer from the map entirely. To fully drop a layer from a layers-panel row, right-click it and choose Unload layer. Loading a route onto the map, or making it active, always re-reads it from the server first — so a route someone else has edited since shows its current shape, not whatever was fetched earlier this session — while it keeps drawing what it already has until the fresh copy arrives, and a route you are actively editing is never overwritten this way. Right-click also offers Zoom to layer on overlays, rasters you've uploaded yourself, vessel tracks, and web layers, fitting the map to that layer's extent — it's never automatic, and it isn't offered for the large fleet-wide Resources layers (loading one of those doesn't move your camera either). Route rows keep their direct click behavior instead of adding the same action to their right-click menu. Right-click also offers Show in Library on routes, overlays, rasters you've uploaded yourself, and web layers: it opens the Library at that item, selecting its most widely shared library — fleet over ship, with a tie going to the newest — or the aggregate view when the item is unfiled. Filters are cleared to reveal the selected row. Creating or importing an item then uses the library shown, subject to your filing permissions. When you can read an item but cannot organize its source, its Libraries and Move to library actions are disabled and explain the ownership restriction. Vessel tracks and the read-only Resources layers aren't library content, so they don't offer it. Every Zoom to action, wherever it appears, first loads the item and switches it on, so the camera always ends up looking at something you can see. Zoom to layer, from the Library or from a layers-panel row, also selects that layer's row in the layers panel, so its detail card opens as the chart fits it. The Routes tab's Zoom to route goes one step further and makes that route the active route, exactly as clicking its row in this panel does.

A raster row's right-click menu also carries Bring to front, which lifts that raster above the other rasters on the chart, and Send to back, which puts it behind every raster shown at that moment. Rasters draw underneath routes, overlays, tracks, and vessel positions regardless of this order — only the stacking among the rasters themselves changes — and the order you set is remembered in your active saved view. A raster loaded afterwards arrives at the bottom of the stack, so a layer you have just sent to the back can end up above one you load next; bring the one you want on top to the front rather than sending others back repeatedly.

Clicking a row (rather than its checkbox) selects that layer and opens its detail card at the bottom of the panel — an overlay's card carries the Names on map toggle (off by default; draws each object's full name at an interior point for areas, a line midpoint, or a point location) and, on a survey-soundings overlay, Depth colors, a raster's card carries its opacity slider and legend, a track's card carries its display range control, and a web layer's card carries its opacity slider plus, for vector-type services, color, line width, and labels — see Web Layers. The caret in the card's header collapses it to the header row and expands it back, for more room in the layer list. The Basemap card uses the same themed caret and collapses in the same way.

The active route

One route at a time is the app's active route — clicking its row in the layers panel (or its waypoints on the chart) makes it active, and it stays highlighted on the map. It's the route the editor opens on and the one comments and Route Check attach to. Submitting, approving and rejecting are not tied to it: those act on whichever route is selected in the Library. In the Library, a route row behaves like every other tab's: clicking it selects the route and raises its Selected card, without loading it or disturbing the route you have open. Load it with the row's checkbox, then click it in the layers panel — or use Zoom to route, which loads, activates, and fits the chart to it in one action, the same way clicking a route in the Find box's SEARCH results does. Making a route active always shows it: if its checkbox was unticked, it is ticked again and the route draws. No other route's checkbox changes.

The card's summary line under the route name reads its waypoint count and total distance, then the total time to run it — 12 WP · 148.6 NM · 01:07:32 — as days, hours, and minutes (DD:HH:MM), the same way the route editor's header total reads. A route carrying a solved schedule uses that schedule's own departure-to-arrival span; otherwise the time is worked out from each leg's own speed, falling back to the route's default speed and then to the ship's default cruising speed, and counting any stop time entered at a waypoint. Where no speed can be found anywhere the time is left off rather than guessed, and the line reads as it always did. With the route open in the editor, the card and the editor header show the same figure as you work.

The active route draws its waypoint names on the chart, beside each waypoint circle. A name of up to twenty characters prints in full; a longer one is shortened with an ellipsis, and a long name of more than one word wraps onto a second line, so the label stays readable and clear of the circle it belongs to. A waypoint with no name shows its number instead. Where the chart is crowded a label may drop rather than print over another one — zoom in and it returns.

Each leg of the active route also shows its direction: the leg's line ends in an arrowhead where it meets the waypoint it runs to, so the line itself reads as an arrow pointing the way the route is travelled. The arrowhead is drawn in the route line's own colour and weight — not a separate symbol laid over the line — and stops just short of the waypoint circle. It keeps a constant size while you zoom, like the waypoint dots. The arrowheads are drawn as part of the line itself, so they stay on it while you drag a waypoint. They follow a great-circle leg's curve, and where a waypoint carries a turn radius they follow the rounded corner and point along the curve the ship will run rather than at the corner. They turn with the chart when you rotate it, and draw on the active route only — a route that is merely loaded shows none. A leg too short on screen to hold one shows none until you zoom in, and they do not depend on the CRS/DIST checkbox below.

On a Submitted or Approved route the active route's card also carries ROUTE CHECK, with a progress bar under the button while the check runs — see Opening the editor.

The active route's card carries a CRS/DIST on map checkbox. Turn it on to draw each leg's true course (for example 245.6°T) above the route line and its distance (for example 12.2 nm) below it — exactly one label pair per leg, centered on whichever part of the leg is currently on screen, so the pair follows along as you pan and zoom. A leg too short on screen to fit the text simply shows nothing until you zoom in far enough. The checkbox is off by default and remembered on this device. On mobile it is on by default and shows at the same useful zooms as desktop.

A leg set to great-circle geometry draws as a curved arc on the chart rather than a straight line; its CRS/DIST label pair, when the checkbox above is on, follows along the curve of the arc instead of a straight segment.

Route Finder

Find fleet routes by where they cross the chart, without first knowing their vessel or library.

Select Route Finder, immediately below Library in the desktop icon rail. It replaces the ordinary map workspace with a route-results sidebar and a simplified chart. Select Route Finder again or Map to return. Route Finder ends any route or overlay editing session before it opens; it does not resume editing when you return. Open map dialogs, including Chart display, close when Finder opens. An open feedback draft is minimized instead of closed, and an already-minimized draft remains available from the header.

Route Finder is available to non-science fleet accounts, including vessel personnel and administrators. Scientist and Chief Scientist accounts use the Library to find the routes shared with them, so those accounts do not show the Route Finder button or sidebar.

The list initially shows Approved routes that cross the current map view. Pan or zoom and the list updates after the map stops moving. Results include routes on Library shelves available to your account plus unfiled routes you are allowed to see. A route filed only on another vessel's Ship shelf is not listed. Clear Routes in view to include available routes outside the chart, including a route with no map geometry. Use Status and the Vessel dropdown to narrow the list further. Open Vessel to see its scrolling checkbox list. Check all and Uncheck all apply to the complete list, and Own Vessel only selects your assigned vessel when your account has one. The closed dropdown shows the vessel name or number selected without making the sidebar grow as vessels are added. No vessel appears when a readable route has no vessel assignment.

The ordinary Find box in the top bar filters Route Finder by route name, vessel, or author. Ctrl + F focuses that same box. Clear filters clears Find and restores Approved, all vessels, and Routes in view. Fit results frames the routes currently listed; clear Routes in view first when you want to frame every route admitted by the other filters.

Route lines use the same color as their vessel's recorded track, but remain thin and muted until you point to or select one. Hovering a route strengthens the line and shows its route and vessel; selecting it adds a stronger colored highlight and opens its summary card. A shipless route uses a neutral gray-blue. The list repeats the route name and vessel, so the colors are never the only way to identify a result.

Select a route on the chart to highlight its row without moving the map. Select a row to highlight and frame that route. When routes overlap, choose the intended route from the short result list. The summary card gives the route's status, vessel, author, waypoint and distance summary, libraries, and last update. Choose Open on map to leave Route Finder, load and activate the route, and frame it on the ordinary map. Choose Show in Library to select it in a library without activating it.

The normal Basemap card remains available. Its street, topographic, satellite, no-background, ENC, palette, depth, and chart controls are the same settings used on the ordinary map. Route Finder hides loaded routes, overlays, rasters, web layers, tracks, vessel positions, planning tools, and comments; only the selected standard background and Finder route lines remain. Changes made in Basemap remain in effect after you leave Route Finder.

Route Finder draws the chart itself with the Clean standard setup from Chart display, so a screenful of candidate tracks stays readable. Leaving Route Finder puts back exactly the chart display setup you had when you opened it, including a Custom one. That clean view lasts only while you are in the Finder: it is never saved into a view, carried in a view link, or remembered as your own setting, so a view saved — or a link copied — while the Finder is open records the setup you had, not the Finder's. The chart palette, display contours, and Source quality are not part of a standard setup and are left as they are, as is everything on the Basemap card. Open Chart display while the Finder is up and your change takes effect there, but it is just as temporary: leaving the Finder still restores the setup from before you opened it.

Drag the sidebar edge to resize it. Its width is remembered on this device. Route Finder remembers its camera, route filters, selection, and list position while you switch among the main surfaces in the same tab, but a reload or sign-out clears that working state. A failed refresh leaves the previous results visible and marks them as possibly stale; use Refresh or Retry to try again.

Weather View

Forecast wind, waves and surface currents along a route, and the latest observed conditions over the sea, on their own full-workspace chart.

Select the sun-and-clouds Weather icon in the desktop/tablet icon rail to replace the ordinary map with Weather View; select it again, or Map, to return. Weather and Route Finder are mutually exclusive — opening one leaves the other. Entering Weather ends any route or overlay editing session and releases its edit lease; it does not resume when you leave. Open map dialogs close. An open feedback draft is minimized instead of closed, and an already-minimized draft stays available. Your normal camera, active route, loaded layers, and chart settings are restored exactly as you left them when you return — Weather keeps its own camera for the tab session.

Weather is available to every signed-in role, including Scientist and Chief Scientist accounts that don't see Route Finder. It never widens who can create or edit a Draft route.

Choosing a route

On entry Weather selects, in order: a route you deliberately picked in Weather's own chooser while that same route was already the one active on the map, and nothing has moved on since; otherwise the route currently active or being edited on the map; otherwise the last route you viewed in Weather during this browser tab; otherwise no route. In practice this means the route you're actively working on wins on reopening Weather, while a deliberate choice you made in Weather still stands if the map hasn't changed since. That remembered route is tab memory only — it clears on sign-out and is never saved to your account, a saved view, or a share link. If no active route applies and the remembered route was deleted or is no longer readable, Weather opens with no route and says so rather than silently picking another one.

While Weather is open, the ordinary top-bar Find box is the route chooser: it opens a dropdown listing No route followed by your readable, non-recycled routes whose route or vessel name matches what you've typed, or the most-recently-updated routes when the box is empty. Choosing a result changes the Weather route without leaving Weather View. The list is reachable from the keyboard alone: Up and Down move the highlight through the results, Enter chooses the highlighted one, and Esc closes the list leaving the route as it was. If your selected route becomes unreadable or is deleted while you're looking at it, its geometry and sampled values disappear immediately and Weather switches to no-route mode with a plain notice.

The Controls pane and background

Weather's controls live in a docked Controls pane on the left, in the same place and manner as the Route Finder pane — not a card floating over the chart. There's no reason to hide it, so it's always shown while Weather is open and simply scrolls if its contents run past the window height; drag its edge to resize it, and your chosen width is remembered on this device. The pane holds, top to bottom:

• The selected route's name and Clear route, or the picked point and Clear point (see "Picking a point" below).
• A Source choice. Each source is named for what it shows, then its model, then its provider. Under Forecast: Wind & Waves - GFS/GFS-Wave - NOAA, Wind & Waves - IFS - ECMWF, Wind & Waves - HRRR CONUS - NOAA and Wind & Waves - HRRR Alaska - NOAA. Under Observed: Wind - Metop-B/C + Oceansat-3 - EUMETSAT/NOAA, Wind - Scatterometer - Copernicus Marine, Wind - Blended Hourly - Copernicus Marine and Waves - Altimeter - Copernicus Marine (see Observed sources). The two HRRR sources show NOAA's high-resolution short-range model at native 3 km detail — noticeably finer than the global 0.25-degree GFS or ECMWF grids — for their own region only: the contiguous US and its coastal waters, or Alaska east of the antimeridian, out to a 48-hour horizon. Waves and swell under either HRRR source still come from GFS-Wave, since HRRR itself forecasts no waves. Beyond 48 hours, or wherever a route or point strays outside a HRRR source's region, the map and timeline show a plain coverage gap rather than quietly switching to another model. A fifth forecast source, Surface Currents - SMOC - Copernicus Marine, shows the forecast surface current — ocean circulation, wave-driven drift and the tide together, at 1/12° — for North American waters between 10° N and 75° N, from the 180° meridian east to 40° W, hourly for three days and every three hours out to ten days. It carries no wind or waves.
• Directly under Source, a Carries: line listing what the chosen source provides, in this order: Wind, Gusts, Waves, Swell, Currents and Pressure — for example Carries: Wind · Gusts · Waves · Swell · Pressure under GFS, Carries: Currents under the surface-current source and Carries: Wind under the scatterometer, so the wind, wave and current sources read apart before you choose a background.
• A Background choice — None, Wind speed, Wind gust, Combined wave height, or Primary swell height, plus Pressure under the GFS, ECMWF and HRRR forecasts, or Current speed under the Copernicus surface-current source — coloring the map with a translucent field.
• Under a source that carries pressure, an Isobars checkbox and its Interval — 1 hPa, 2 hPa, 4 hPa or 8 hPa — directly under the background (see Pressure and isobars).
• Wind glyphs and Wave arrows toggles, which can both be on at once, plus a Wind glyph choice between Barbs and Arrows.
• A Wave portrayal choice between Combined waves and Primary swell.
• Show wind over land, which only affects the wind-speed and gust backgrounds.
• Under an observed source, Satellite tracks and Buoys toggles.
• Colors, a section that expands in place into the color-scale editor below — no dialog.
• The legend for the active scale and symbols.
• A Provenance block directly under the legend: the Model cycle and how long ago it was issued, then Downloaded — when Plotroom downloaded that cycle and how long after the cycle time that was (see Freshness, staleness, and refresh); for an observed source, the newest observation and its age instead. Then the model-valid time or shown window, coverage, the published valid times or steps, when the catalog was read (and, for an observed source, published), the provider credits as links, and the planning-aid notice.
• Status lines only when one applies: a stale-source warning, a one-line note if the current map data failed to load, and Refresh forecast or Refresh observations once a newer cycle or observation step has actually published.

Forecasts, observed grids, satellite tracks and buoy readings update automatically. An interrupted update leaves the previous complete data available; check its source time and any stale-source warning before using it. Choose Refresh forecast or Refresh observations when offered to use newer data in the open view.

The timeline header just below the map repeats the cycle and valid time, and the legend repeats the source, data time and credit, so those stay in view however far the pane is scrolled.

Background, wind glyphs, and wave arrows are three independent choices — turning on a glyph never changes the background, and picking a background never turns off a glyph. The first time you open Weather it shows the NOAA source, the Combined wave height background, wind barbs on, and wave arrows on — one ordinary state among many, not a special mode. After that, your last source, background, glyph toggles, wave portrayal, and land choice are remembered on this device. Switching source never changes what a color means: the same color scale applies to every source, so a 30-knot wind reads the same color whether it's forecast or observed. Choosing ECMWF turns off Primary swell height and Primary swell with an explanation that its open-data feed doesn't carry the swell pair NOAA provides. Choosing the Copernicus surface-current source turns off every wind and wave choice with This source carries surface currents only and shows Current speed in place of a wind or wave background; your own choice returns when you switch back to another source.

With Weather open and your keyboard focus somewhere other than a text box, Left and Right step the active time slider by one column — no need to click into the timeline first, and a Source or Background dropdown you have just used yields Left and Right too, keeping its other keys (under the altimeter source, which has a single composite, the keys do nothing). Shift+Left/Right steps by three columns, and Home/End jump to the slider's own ends. This includes the map itself: after a map click the arrow keys still step time rather than panning the chart, so the map's keyboard pan and +/− zoom keys are off while Weather is open (mouse, trackpad and touch pan and zoom as usual). If your computer or browser is set to reduce motion, Weather's expanding sections and the timeline's progress bar change state without animating.

While Weather View is open, Plotroom prepares one earlier and three later forecast steps, where available, and retains loaded map tiles for quick comparisons. Background preparation pauses as you move the map and stops when you leave Weather View. A new area or forecast step may need time to load; wait for its weather display before interpreting a gap as missing forecast data.

Only the route, the simulated vessel with its conditions ring, your own vessel if you have one, and the weather field itself draw over the chart — Weather temporarily switches to the effective Clean chart preset and hides ordinary routes, tracks, live vessel positions, overlays, rasters, web layers, Planned Surveys, bridge tools, comments, and editing affordances while keeping your chosen background, ENC, and palette from the Basemap card, which stays available and reverts to your everyday chart setup when you leave. The simulated vessel wears a small ring of arrows showing the wind and the wave or swell arriving on it — colored and labeled just like the map, pointing straight in at the ship since it already faces its own course. If you have an assigned ship, your own vessel's live position and a dashed seven-day track stay visible the whole time too, regardless of the ordinary map's SHIP POSITIONS and VESSEL TRACKS toggles. Weather also dims the chart to 30% on entry so the colored field stands out; move the Chart dim slider while in Weather to adjust that for the rest of the session — your everyday dim comes back when you leave, untouched. Wave fields only cover water; wind and gust cover land too when Show wind over land is on. A cell or time with no data stays transparent rather than being guessed at — except under Primary swell height, where a cell over open water with no distinct swell system reads a definite 0 instead of transparent; a swell cell is left transparent only where there's no sea, or no forecast coverage, at that time and place.

Pointing at the map reports the source and cycle (or observation step), the selected and actual data time with its age, wind speed, gust and direction, wave height and direction, primary swell when the source supplies it (NOAA, HRRR CONUS, HRRR Alaska), sea-level pressure under the Pressure background, the current under the Copernicus surface-current source, the contributing satellite or station for an observed value, and whether a value is interpolated or unavailable. Every displayed value uses knots, feet, and degrees true, and every wind and wave direction is stated as the bearing it comes from. A current is the exception: it is stated by its set, the direction the water flows toward — 1.8 kt setting 045°T.

Under the Copernicus surface-current source the map draws current arrows, always on: each arrow points where the water flows, grows through three lengths — below 1 knot, 1 to below 2.5 knots, and 2.5 knots and above — and takes the color of its speed. Current speed uses one fixed scale from 0 to 5 knots, pale to blue through 2 knots and then yellow, orange and red; faster water takes the red. The legend marks this scale Fixed and shows the three arrow lengths; the Colors editor does not change it.

Pressure and isobars

The GFS, ECMWF and HRRR forecasts (CONUS and Alaska) carry each model's mean sea-level pressure, over land as well as sea, at the same forecast steps as their wind. Choose Pressure as the Background to color the chart by it: one fixed scale from 960 to 1050 hPa, deep blue for low pressure through pale near 1013 hPa to red for high, marked Fixed in the legend and unaffected by the Colors editor. Pointing at the map adds a Pressure row in whole hPa (1013 hPa) while it is the background. The observed sources and the Copernicus surface-current source carry no pressure, so they offer neither the background nor isobars; there a Pressure background you chose gives way to another the source has — waves, wind or current — and returns when you switch back.

Tick Isobars to draw lines of equal pressure over any background, each labelled with its pressure in hPa and coloured by it, from blue at low pressure to red at high, over a thin halo that keeps the line visible on any background. H (red) and L (blue) with the pressure mark each clear high and low — one at least 1 hPa above or below its surroundings. Interval sets the spacing; it starts at 4 hPa and is greyed out while isobars are off. Isobars and their interval are remembered on this device. The lines are redrawn for the area in view: they clear at once when you step to another time, change source or change the interval, follow the chart when you pan, and stop where the source has no data, such as outside a HRRR region. A high or low whose surroundings run into such a gap is not marked. While isobars are on the map the legend adds a key, Isobars every 4 hPa, labelled in hPa and coloured from blue (low pressure) to red (high); H and L mark highs and lows with their pressure. When the view holds no pressure data at all, the pane reads Map data unavailable — no pressure data for isobars in this view; move the chart into the source's coverage, or wait for its next forecast cycle if it was published before pressure was available. Map data unavailable — isobars could not be drawn means the lines failed to draw; change the time step or pan to try again.

Color scales and wind glyph style

What colors you see follows a simple order: your own colors, if you've set any; otherwise your vessel's default, set by your ship's CO or NAV-grade officers (or an administrator) in Ship configuration → Weather; otherwise the Plotroom default. A Scientist or Chief Scientist account has no assigned ship, so it goes straight from your own colors to the Plotroom default. The Colors section of the Controls pane expands in place into an editor with a Wind tab (knots) and a Waves tab (feet), so you can tune a scale while watching the map, and opens with a one-line statement of which of the three you're currently looking at — Your own scales, Vessel default — {ship name}, or Plotroom default — so it's never a guess. Each tab offers a Preset — Plotroom (the default), Windy-style, High contrast, or Single hue — which replaces that tab's own stop list when chosen, and an editable list of two to twelve strictly increasing threshold/color stops you can add to, remove from, or edit. Colors blend smoothly between stops; a value below the first stop or above the last takes that end color. An invalid stop — non-numeric, negative, out of order, a duplicate, or an unreadable color — is flagged in place and never applied. Every valid change repaints the map, legend, and timeline/buoy chips immediately, with no new data request. The legend always names the active preset or Custom alongside its stops.

Editing any stop, on either tab, makes both scales yours from that moment — editing marks the preset Custom and the origin line switches straight to Your own scales; there's no such thing as owning just the Wind scale while still following the vessel's Waves. Two pane-level actions sit above the tabs: Use Plotroom defaults is always there (greyed out once you're already on Plotroom default) and makes both scales yours, set explicitly to Plotroom's own stops; Use vessel default appears only once you have colors of your own and your ship carries a default, and choosing it drops your own colors and goes straight back to following the vessel, live, with no reload.

The Wind glyph choice — Barbs or Arrows — lives in the Controls pane with the glyph toggles. Barbs use standard 5/10/50-knot feathers pointing from the wind's source direction. Arrows point the way the wind blows and grow through three labelled length bands with speed; wave arrows always point the way waves travel. Numeric readouts for both state the source direction as from {bearing}°T. Wind and wave glyphs draw at a dense enough spacing to be genuinely useful for reading the field by eye, without crowding into an unreadable mess — they thin out again automatically as you zoom out. Glyphs sit on the source model's own grid, at most one to a grid cell, so that spacing is a target the model has to be fine enough to meet: zoom in far enough on a global 0.25-degree source (NOAA, ECMWF) and its glyphs spread apart into the bare grid rather than multiplying, while the 0.03-degree HRRR forecasts hold the full pattern well past that point. Sparse glyphs on a global source at close zoom are the model's resolution, not missing data. Wave arrows are colored by the same Wave color scale as the background, and grow slightly larger over taller waves, so height reads from color and size together even with the wave background turned off. Unlike the color scales, the wind-glyph choice has no vessel default — it's always your own account setting, Barbs until you change it.

Color scales and the wind-glyph choice are account settings: they follow you to every device and are not part of a saved view or share link. Once you've set colors of your own, they're private to you — two people on the same bridge can see different colors for the same value, which the legend and the origin line always make plain — but until you set your own, what you see is shared with every other crew member who also hasn't, and a change your CO makes to the vessel default reaches you immediately. Every other Weather choice on this page — source, background, glyph and overlay toggles, wave portrayal, and land — is a per-device display preference instead.

Timing modes and the timeline

The bottom timeline spans the route's preview ETD through final ETA and shows ETD/ETA handles, a continuous voyage-time playhead, the selected time and nearest forecast time, and a color-coded forecast strip. The simulated vessel's own numbers live in that strip and in its conditions ring rather than in a separate card. While you drag a timeline handle or a sketch point the strip waits, dimmed, and re-samples once when you release; while you are still placing sketch points it re-samples after a two-second pause in drawing or when you finish the sketch. Voyage times use the route's time zone. Point, sketch and no-route times use your computer's local time, even when a point is selected beside a loaded route. Forecast hover cards name the model Cycle in local time with its UTC offset alongside Zulu (UTC); the selected and model-valid times are not repeated there, because the timeline header and Provenance already show them with the same two clocks. The difference between selected and model-valid time in the header tells you how far the sampled forecast is from your selection. At high browser zoom, scroll the summary to see lower rows and scroll the surrounding timeline card to reach its timing controls. Columns scroll horizontally without squeezing their values. The strip uses one column per actual published forecast step — not an evenly spaced summary — grouped into rows much like the bottom bar on familiar consumer weather sites: an Hours row with a day header wherever the date changes, a Wind row (speed in knots with a barb or arrow, cell tinted by the Wind color scale), a Gusts row (gust in knots, tinted the same way), a Waves row (height in feet with a solid wave arrow, tinted by the Wave color scale), and, for NOAA, a Swell row for the primary swell partition (height in feet with a dashed arrow, tinted the same way) — a Swell cell reads 0 ft wherever the forecast shows open water with no distinct swell system to report, so a hatched gap there always means no sea or no forecast coverage, never an untracked swell. Under the GFS, ECMWF and HRRR forecasts a Pressure row follows the wave rows: sea-level pressure in whole hPa, tinted by the fixed pressure scale, whatever the background. Under the Copernicus surface-current source the strip has Hours and a Current row only: the current's speed in knots over an arrow pointing where it flows, tinted by the current scale. Each cell's color matches the same value's color on the map, so reading across the strip tells the same story as reading across the chart. The vessel moves along each leg according to the preview schedule and holds position during a stop. Weather time snaps to the nearest available forecast instant; values in between are spatially interpolated, and a genuinely missing cell shows as a dash on a hatched background rather than a guess.

When the route's last waypoint carries a stop, the strip doesn't stop at ETA: it continues, in a visually lighter shade, as a STAY segment through the end of that stop, with every column — Hours included — read at the waypoint itself. ETA keeps marking the moment of arrival; nothing about the vessel's schedule, route totals, or exports changes because of the stay.

A route or sketch strip loads in chunks along the voyage rather than all at once, so the earliest hours paint before the last. The strip clears while a new set of chunks is coming in — changing the plan, the timing mode, or the forecast source never leaves the previous voyage's values on screen under a header that no longer matches them — and a Sampling route N%… (or Sampling sketch N%…) note with a progress bar shows in the timeline header until every chunk has landed.

Five timing modes control how the preview schedule is built, chosen above the timeline, and a read-only sixth appears while you are previewing a speed alternative:

• Saved schedule — the route's own solved ETD, waypoint ETAs, and speeds, with read-only handles. A route with no departure or fixed waypoint ETA needs a date before Weather can use its schedule: set either in the route editor and click Solve. Saved schedule stays selected until you choose another mode. Other incomplete dated schedules show an explanation and fall back to a what-if mode without changing the route.
• Shift plan — keeps every planned leg speed and stop but frees the departure time; dragging either handle slides the whole window by the same amount, for a direct look at "what if we left later."
• One average speed — applies one entered speed to every sailing leg, keeping stops. Choose it to preview weather for a route without saved dates; the preview does not change the route.
• Fit window — frees both endpoints independently and solves any unfixed leg speeds to fit the window you choose, while fixed-speed legs, stops, and the route's speed limits stay exactly as set. An infeasible window is rejected with the minimum or maximum arrival that would actually work and what's binding it. When the last waypoint carries a stop, the whole call — the underway voyage and the stay together — is fit into the window: the end handle is the plan's end, the stay included — it reads END and sits at the end of the stay, and dragging it sets when the plan ends — while an ETA marker inside the window shows where the arrival lands.
• With currents — sails your saved plan's leg speeds through the predicted currents and shows when each waypoint is reached; only the ETD handle moves. See With currents below.
• Alternative — read-only, and not something you pick: Weather shows it as the checked mode while you are previewing a speed alternative (below), with that alternative's own departure, arrival and leg speeds on the timeline. Both handles are read-only, as in Saved schedule. Choose any timing mode to go back to your plan.

None of the timing modes ever change the saved route, its schedule constraints, or acquire an edit lease — they are what-if previews only. With no route selected — including right after you press Clear route — the timeline instead spans the current forecast's entire published range, from its very first time through its very last (or the full trailing observed window under an observed source), and simply moves the weather display; it has no ETD/ETA handles, vessel, or summary strip. That full range is the same one point mode uses below, so the plain slider and a point's strip always agree on where the range starts and ends. Clearing a route widens the timeline to this full range right away, so you can drag anywhere across it — including times already in the past — rather than staying limited to the cleared route's old span.

With currents

Choose With currents above the timeline to see how the predicted currents change your saved plan. Your leg speeds are speeds through the water: they stay exactly as planned, and so do your stops. What changes is how fast the ship makes good along the track, and so when it reaches each waypoint. The caption under the modes repeats this, and that nothing is written to the route. The mode needs a saved route; it is not offered for a sketch or for a picked point on its own.

• Drag the ETD handle to try another departure. The window slides with it while you drag; when you release it, Plotroom works out the arrival for that departure. The ETA handle is locked — the arrival is the result, not something you set.
• Each waypoint has a tick on the timeline at its arrival under currents. Point at a tick, or tab to it, to read the waypoint, its arrival, the speed made good (SMG) over the leg ending there, and the current on that leg — for example current 045° / 1.8 kt (Model) for the ocean-current forecast, or Sta. and the station's name for a prediction station. Click a tick, or press Enter, to move the timeline to that arrival. The last waypoint's tick sits on top of the ETA handle.
• A fixed ETA is compared, not met. With currents keeps your speeds and shows how far the arrival misses the fixed time: +0:42 beside the tick, in the warning color when late, and a line such as Leg 4 arrives 0:42 after its fixed ETA under currents under the modes. To meet the time, change the plan in the route editor.
• The forecast strip reads wind and waves where and when the ship is under currents. After the weather source, its header names the current sources the route used — for example Currents: NOAA CO-OPS · Canadian Hydrographic Service — not for navigation — and pointing at it gives their full credits.
• When a head current is too strong for a leg's planned speed, the answer stops at that leg with, for example, Leg 5 cannot be made good: 4.2 kt current against 3.0 kt through the water. Raise that leg's speed in the route editor or try another departure.
• The first answer for a departure can take several seconds while station predictions are gathered.

Plotroom takes the current from the nearest NOAA or Canadian current-prediction station within 3 nautical miles of the track, else from the Copernicus Marine ocean-current forecast; a stretch with neither is sailed at its planned speed. See Currents along a route. A result for the route's saved departure also appears in the route editor and on the passage-plan sheet.

Speed alternatives

Speed alternatives asks Plotroom for calmer, faster or steadier ways to sail the route you already have. It sits in the Controls pane directly under the route name, as a section you can collapse, and it needs a saved route — there is nothing to optimize under a sketch or a picked point on its own. The geometry never changes: an alternative keeps every waypoint, every fixed-speed leg, every stop and every exact waypoint ETA, and changes only the leg speeds that are free to change, plus the departure time where you allow it. Nothing on the chart moves; what changes is the timeline, the vessel's progress along it, and the numbers in the section. An alternative's leg speeds are speeds through the water, like your plan's; with Account for currents ticked, its times are worked out through the predicted currents (below).

Set the two ends of the voyage first. Departure is either a Window — an earliest and a latest departure you are willing to accept, both starting at the current preview's ETD, so leaving them alone means "same departure" — or Back-solve from arrival, where you give no departure at all and Plotroom works it out from the arrival instead. Back-solving is offered only when the arrival actually pins the voyage, that is under Keep saved ETA or Arrive at; with neither end pinned there is nothing to solve against. Arrival is one of Keep saved ETA (the route's own final fixed ETA, offered only when it has one), Arrive at (a time you type), Arrival window (an earliest and a latest arrival), or Any time.

The vessel's own weather limits decide what counts as rough. A nested Profile disclosure shows the limits in force — from your ship's Weather tab when it has them, otherwise Plotroom's built-in defaults, and it says which — and lets you override any of them for one run without changing the ship's settings. They are planning preferences, not certified vessel limits.

Account for currents, just above Find alternatives, is ticked unless you clear it, and keeps your choice until you reload. With it ticked, each leg is timed at the speed it makes good over the ground through the predicted current — from a current-prediction station within 3 nautical miles of the track, else the Copernicus Marine ocean-current forecast (see Currents along a route). The speeds searched stay speeds through the water inside each leg's limits; what the current changes is when the ship arrives, so departure and arrival windows and fixed ETAs are judged on the arrivals over the ground. A speed that cannot hold the track against a cross-current, or makes no progress against a head current, is ruled out on that leg, and when nothing else works the section names it: current too strong to hold the track or no progress against the current. Where no current data covers the voyage, the run is the same as with the box cleared. Clear it to plan as if the water were still.

Find alternatives runs it. The result is up to three rows — Calmest, Balanced and Least change — with the baseline they are measured against on top: Current plan, or Best speed when you are back-solving, which is every free leg at the fastest speed it is allowed, departing as late as still makes the arrival. Two intents that work out to the same schedule appear once, named for both, rather than being padded into a false choice, so one or two rows is a normal answer. Each row gives departure and arrival, how much longer or shorter the voyage is, maximum wind and waves, hours above your preferred thresholds, hours in beam seas, how many legs change speed, and any hours with no forecast under them. A chart compares wind and waves over time across the rows, and a Legs list gives the leg-by-leg before-and-after speeds, marking fixed legs and any leg whose speed range had to be assumed because neither the leg nor the ship sets one. On a run timed through currents each leg also shows its speed over ground — 11.0 → 12.0 kt (11.0 SOG) — and pointing at it gives the current and its source, Set 045° · drift 1.0 kt · station (or model). The first line of the results names the forecast cycle and the currents the run used — Currents: SMOC Sep 02 00:00 UTC+0, 2 stations, or Currents: none. When nothing at all works, the section says so and names the limit that blocked it — it never quietly relaxes a limit to produce an answer, and it never scores a forecast gap as calm.

Preview puts a row on the timeline in the read-only Alternative mode, so the strip, the moving vessel and the conditions ring all read that alternative; previewing the baseline row puts your plan (or the best-speed baseline) back. Choosing any timing mode, clearing the route or changing the forecast source returns to your plan.

Save as new Draft files the selected alternative as a new route through the usual destination-library choice and the usual Draft permissions — the route you optimized is not touched. The Draft is named for the route, the alternative, the forecast model and the date of the run, for example Kodiak Approach – Calmest · GFS · 2026-09-29, with (copy) added when that name is already taken. It carries the alternative's departure and, for every leg the optimizer changed, its new speed marked as a fixed speed, so an alternative found in still water gives back exactly the schedule you previewed when you open the Draft in the editor.

A Draft saved from an alternative timed through currents carries that alternative's arrival times, keeps every fixed ETA, and has the alternative's speeds through the water. The route editor's Solve, and the solve at approval, work in still water, so they re-time the Draft without currents; to let that still-water solve meet each fixed ETA, the last leg into it — sometimes every leg since the previous fixed time — keeps the alternative's speed without being marked fixed. Use With currents to see the Draft's times through the current again. If a fixed ETA can be made only with the current's help, the save is refused with The candidate no longer solves on a fresh Draft and the solver's reason.

Update current route, beside Save as new Draft, writes the previewed alternative's leg speeds into the route you optimized instead of filing a new one. It is available when you may edit that route — a Draft you plan, a Submitted route you are reviewing as CO, or a science account's own personal Draft — and otherwise greyed out, with a tooltip such as Route is not editable (Approved). Choose Update route to apply the speeds and solve the schedule, or Cancel to leave the route unchanged. Times update using the still-water plan; unfixed speeds may adjust to meet fixed ETAs. Departure, stops, fixed ETAs and other settings are kept. If the schedule cannot be solved, the update is refused and the route is unchanged. Under currents the last leg into each fixed ETA takes the alternative's speed without being marked fixed, as in a Draft. The write takes the route's edit lock for a moment, so it is refused with Being edited by and the name while someone else is editing the route. When it succeeds the section reads Route updated with Calmest speeds, and the route's history records the change. The run is then older than the route, so the section asks you to run it again before previewing or saving another alternative.

An alternative that leaves at a different time from the route, or was found for a different arrival — a new Arrive at time, or Any time on a route with a fixed final ETA — cannot update the route: the section reads This alternative changes the route's departure; save it as a Draft instead (or arrival). Use Save as new Draft for those.

A run belongs to one route version and one forecast cycle: if the route is edited or a newer cycle arrives afterwards, the section says so and asks you to run it again rather than filing a stale plan. Runs you do not save are kept for a week and then discarded.

Picking a point

With no route selected, click anywhere on the map to drop a pin and fix that spot as a point. The bottom bar switches to the same color-coded, step-based strip used for a route, but showing that one location's weather over time instead — there's no vessel to move and no schedule, just the forecast (or observed conditions) at the pin. The Controls pane shows the picked coordinates and a Clear point control; choosing it drops the pin and returns to the plain no-route timeline. Point picking works under observed sources too, stepping through the same trailing window as the map. Only Clear point discards a picked point.

With a route or sketch on screen, right-click the map and choose Forecast at this point to drop a pin there without losing the route or sketch. The voyage stays on the map and the bottom bar's selector gains a Single point entry alongside the route's timing modes (or, for a sketch, Sketch route): choose it to switch the strip to the pinned point, and choose Sketch route or any timing mode to switch back to the voyage. Both share one playhead, so switching between them keeps the same moment in view. The Controls pane shows the picked point and its Clear point control on their own row, under the route or sketch line. Selecting a different route or No route keeps the point and its Single point entry; starting a sketch does the same. A plain map click still only picks a point in no-route mode with no sketch in progress — with a route selected, or while sketching, a click leaves the point alone (a sketch click adds to the sketch instead).

Because a point's strip covers the source's entire published range, it loads in a few pieces rather than all at once: the hours around your selected time appear first, with the rest filling in right after. While that's happening, the timeline header shows a short progress note ("Sampling 2 of 4…") so you know more is on the way; picking a different point or switching sources stops the old fetch from painting over your new choice.

Sketching a quick route

When there's no certified or fully drawn-out route yet and you just want to see the weather along a rough track, right-click the map and choose Sketch a route from here to drop a first point where you clicked, or use the Sketch route button in the Controls pane and click the map for the first point. Each further click lays down another point, laid out and read exactly like a Divider — distance and true bearing on every leg, a running total in the pane. While you're placing points the hover readout stays out of the way — no data card pops up under the pointer until you finish drawing. Enter, Esc, or a double-click ends the append phase (the double-click that ends it isn't also added as a point); a sketch takes 2 to 200 points and up to 20,000 nm of total track.

Once drawn, drag any point to move it, hover a leg and click its "+" handle to insert a new point there, or right-click a point for Remove point (Delete/Backspace does the same for a selected point; a finished sketch keeps at least two points, and Add points in the pane resumes appending after the last one). Every change immediately re-samples the weather along the new track. A sketch sails at one entered average speed — defaulting to your ship's usual speed, or 10 kt — from an ETD that defaults to the next whole hour; dragging either the ETD or ETA handle slides that fixed-duration window exactly like Shift plan above.

A sketch takes over from whichever route or point was active — the header chooser reads Sketch route while one is drawn, and a map click never picks a point meanwhile. Choosing a route (or No route) from the chooser clears the sketch and selects that instead; Clear sketch in the pane brings back whatever was active before. A sketch lives only in this browser tab — it's never saved as a route, a Draft, or part of a saved view or share link, and it disappears on sign-out or in a different tab or device. It needs a forecast source, since it's a timed preview along a drawn track and observed sources run no timing at all (below).

Observed sources

Choose Wind - Metop-B/C + Oceansat-3 - EUMETSAT/NOAA to display the three satellites' winds together. Latest passes shows each Metop satellite's latest available pass; their separate reference times appear in Provenance. Drag the observation slider's knob, or press anywhere on its track, to request an earlier time across the preceding 72 hours; ticks are evenly spaced and land cleanly under the pointer or arrow keys regardless of how many the track holds. Each Metop satellite displays its nearest available pass, which can be earlier or later than the requested time. This is not an accumulation of all passes in a time window, and a pass reference is not the exact measurement time of every wind cell.

Oceansat-3 shows the newest observations in each displayed area from the 24 hours ending at its newest measurement. An earlier slider time shows the six hours ending at that time, without using later passes. Hover an Oceansat-3 vector for its wind speed, direction and actual observation time. Its newest measurement and displayed window appear in Provenance. NOAA/NESDIS/STAR supplies these winds; gaps between passes remain blank.

This source shows Barbs or Arrows — the same wind-glyph choice used under other sources — colored with your Wind color scale; the choice and the color scale both apply live. Wind glyphs turns all three satellites on or off. There is no filled background, gust field or point/route summary; Metop image glyphs have no numerical hover. A picked point is kept for use when you return to another source. Blank areas have no displayed wind observations; they do not indicate calm conditions. A tile that fails to load is skipped rather than left showing a coarser, oversized version of itself; if several tiles in view fail, the status line reads "Map data unavailable — ASCAT tiles failed to load from EUMETSAT" — change time or re-select the source to retry. Satellite tracks remains the separate altimeter wave-height overlay; it does not control these satellite wind glyphs. If one provider is unavailable, observations from the other remain available.

Wind - Scatterometer - Copernicus Marine, Wind - Blended Hourly - Copernicus Marine, and Waves - Altimeter - Copernicus Marine show recently measured conditions instead of a forecast, and are deliberately map-and-time-slider only — they don't drive route timing. Selecting one replaces the timeline with an observation slider covering the trailing 72 hours: the scatterometer steps through six-hour windows plus a Latest 24 h step (the default, the newest observation in each cell from the last 24 hours), the blended source steps hourly, defaulting to the newest hour, and the altimeter source shows its Latest 24 h composite alone — the header names the window and there is no time track to move along. The slider is one track of evenly spaced ticks under a round knob: drag the knob, or press anywhere on the track, to move between steps, whatever the step count or how densely its ticks sit. With a point picked under the scatterometer the ticks and the point strip offer only the windows in which a satellite actually passed over that point (a given spot is crossed at about the same two local times a day); Latest 24 h always stays, and if no window in the whole span crossed the point every window is shown with a note saying so. Everything tied to voyage time — the vessel and its conditions ring, ETD/ETA handles, timing modes, and summary columns — is hidden; the route stays drawn as a reference line, the route chooser keeps working, and your own vessel (if you have one) stays exactly as visible as it is under a forecast source. Returning to a forecast source restores your previous timing preview.

The scatterometer and blended sources supply wind only — no gridded wave field — so the wave backgrounds, Wave portrayal, and the land toggle are hidden or disabled with an explanation under either. The altimeter source is the mirror image: it supplies a wave-height grid and no wind at all, built from the same along-track satellite points as the Satellite tracks overlay (a 0.5-degree cell holding the mean of every point that fell inside it, plus its immediate neighbor cells so a narrow satellite pass doesn't leave a sliver of gap on either side — everywhere else stays an honest gap rather than a guess). Because that source has no direction, Wind glyphs and Wave arrows are both disabled under it, and its Satellite tracks overlay starts on by default so you can see exactly which passes fed the grid; picking a point under it shows no per-step strip (there is one composite, not a series) — hover the map to read the point.

Hovering an observed background reads its value with an Observed line saying when the measurement was made and how long ago that was — 2026-09-20 02:05Z (2 h 10 min ago). The scatterometer and altimeter sources carry a time per cell and give you that cell's own. The blended source carries none, so the line gives the hour the analysis is valid at, which is the end of the window you have selected. Where a source has neither a time of its own nor a window that ends at a known hour, the line is left off rather than guessed. Forecast cards are unaffected: their times stay in the timeline header and Provenance.

Under any observed source, two overlay toggles are available: Satellite tracks (sparse satellite altimeter significant-wave-height points, updated roughly every three hours, thinned to a minimum on-screen spacing so zooming in on a pass reveals more of its individual observations) and Buoys (NOAA NDBC stations reporting wind, gust, wave height, period, pressure, and temperature, updated hourly). Satellite tracks show the same altimeter passes under every observed background; choosing the scatterometer does not turn them into scatterometer swaths. Passes appear only where a satellite crossed the visible area within the displayed window. At the background's newest step, overlays show their own latest 24 hours. At older steps, the window ends at the selected step — 24 hours under Latest 24 h, otherwise six. Every observed value carries its own observation time and age. Click a buoy disc to pin its station card: the snapshot table is followed by a Last 24 h chart of the station's own hourly observations, with wind and gust in knots, wave height in feet when the station reports waves, and arrows showing where the wind blows toward. The map shifts just enough to show the whole card when it would run off the edge; the card stays while you pan, and closes with its button, Escape, or by turning Buoys off. Its NOAA NDBC credit links to the station's page on the NDBC website, which opens in a new tab.

Freshness, staleness, and refresh

A Weather session pins the forecast cycle or observation step it opened with, so nothing repaints mid-session on its own. When a newer one publishes, the pane offers Refresh forecast or Refresh observations; accepting it re-samples the whole preview atomically, never mixing times from two cycles. If the latest update fails, the previous cycle stays available, labeled stale with its age, rather than disappearing. A route portion beyond the latest forecast reads Outside latest forecast coverage, and any coverage gap — a swath edge, a missing buoy — shows as plain absence, never as calm conditions.

A forecast is offered for refresh only when all its expected fields are ready. Check its issue and valid times before planning; faster loading does not mean the provider has issued newer data.

Forecast centres run their models at 00, 06, 12 and 18 UTC but release each cycle hours after that nominal time: ECMWF roughly 7–8 hours later, NOAA GFS 5–6 hours, and HRRR in under 2 hours. Plotroom checks every hour and downloads a cycle once it is complete, so the Downloaded row in Provenance normally reads about that release delay after the cycle, plus up to an hour. A Model cycle 8–12 hours old is therefore normal for the global models and does not mean a newer run was missed. A Downloaded time well beyond those delays, or a stale-source warning, points to a late provider or a failed update.

The Copernicus surface-current forecast is issued once a day. Plotroom takes each day's run once it reaches nine days ahead, so a Model cycle up to a day old is normal for it, and it is marked stale only after 36 hours.

Tides and currents

Predicted tide heights and tidal streams at NOAA and Canadian stations, graphed in a panel under the chart.

Select the wave-shaped Tides & currents icon in the desktop/tablet icon rail, just below Weather. Tide and current stations appear on the chart and the TIDES & CURRENTS panel opens along the bottom. Select the icon again, or ✕ on the panel, to close it. Opening it returns you to the normal map — Route Finder, Weather, the Library and other full-screen panels close — but a route you are editing stays open for editing. Opening Weather or Route Finder closes Tides and currents. It is available to every signed-in role, is not offered on phones, and is always closed when you sign in or reload. To report a problem with it, use Send feedback: the Tides & Currents Module category is chosen for you while the panel is showing.

Stations on the chart

Station names appear at harbour scales where they fit. Select a station to show its predictions. Stations stay selectable while you edit a route or draw an overlay: a click on a station selects it instead of placing a waypoint or vertex, so click beside the symbol to place one. A waypoint handle drawn over a station keeps its own click. A station also takes the click over a notice, survey area, ice area, vessel track or ship marker drawn beneath it.

Right-click the chart and choose Tides and currents here, directly below Forecast at this point, to open the panel for that spot. Plotroom looks for the nearest two tide stations and the nearest two current stations within 50 nautical miles of it:

• With one station that close, the panel opens on it.
• With more than one, Stations near this point lists them under Tide stations and Current stations, nearest first. Each row gives the station's symbol as drawn on the chart, its name, its source and type (Alameda · NOAA · subordinate), and its distance and true bearing from the spot you clicked (2.3 nm · 047°T); the spot's position heads the list, in your coordinate format. A group with no station in range reads None within 50 nm. Select a row, or move to it with the arrow keys and press Enter, to open the panel on that station. Cancel, ✕ or Esc closes the list and leaves Tides and currents as it was before you right-clicked: if it was closed, it closes again.
• With none that close, the panel shows the station list instead.

The entry is in the Browse menu and on bare chart while overlay objects are selected; the route-editing menu leaves it out.

What each station is doing

Zoom in until the numbered clusters open into single stations. Each station whose predictions have loaded then shows its tide or stream at the time the panel is showing: the present, or a time you point at or pin on the graph (see Reading the graph and the table).

Point at an arrow or bar to read the station and its value, for example Seattle · 12.3 ft at 10:19 or F 1.8 kt 045°T at 10:19, the time in the panel's zone. Click it to select the station, as with any station symbol. A current's speed, here and on its graph, is the flow along the station's flood and ebb directions (see Reading the graph and the table).

Plotroom loads predictions for up to 40 stations nearest the centre of the chart. It starts shortly after the chart stops moving, and the selected station always loads first. While it works, the line under the graph, or the heading of the station list, reads, for example, 3 stations loading. A station keeps its plain symbol in these cases:

• its predictions have not loaded yet, or it lies outside those 40;
• the chart is zoomed out to the clusters;
• the time being shown falls outside the panel's dates;
• it is a weak-and-variable current, which publishes no prediction;
• its source, NOAA or CHS, is paused after failures (see When predictions do not appear).

Choosing a station

With no station selected, the panel lists the 12 nearest stations. With an active route they are ranked by distance from the route line under Nearest along the route, and each row names the waypoint the station lies near (near WP 4); otherwise they are ranked around the centre of the chart under Nearest to the map centre. Each row gives the station's symbol as drawn on the chart (see Stations on the chart), its name, NOAA or CHS, and its distance in nautical miles. Select a row to show that station. Zoom to brings the chart to the station without selecting it, centring it above the panel and zooming in when you are farther out. The ‹ button beside a station's name returns to the list.

The first opening on a device downloads the station lists (Loading stations…), which can take a minute on a slow connection; Plotroom keeps them on this device for a day. If NOAA's or CHS's list cannot be loaded, the panel reads, for example, CHS stations unavailable — showing the rest: the other stations remain usable, and Retry asks for the missing list again.

Dates, span, and units

The row above the graph names the station and its source and type — NOAA · harmonic, CHS · subordinate or NOAA · weak and variable — beside Zoom to and Print (see Printing a station's predictions).

• Start sets the first day shown and Today returns to today. Each opening starts on today.
• 1d, 3d, 7d and 30d set the span from the start day. Custom adds an End date, up to 366 days counting both ends; an end date outside that is brought back into range when you leave the field.
• ft / m sets the height unit for tide stations. Current stations always read in knots (kt), shown right after the span buttons, or after End on a Custom span.
• Above, Below and Include in table, to the right of ft / m on a tide station, shade the graph beyond the heights you set and list when the tide crosses them (see Highlighting heights).
• Bin appears for a NOAA current station predicted at several depths and chooses the depth; it opens on the shallowest.
• The zone note, for example Times in UTC-8 (route zone), names the clock the graph and table use: the active route's time zone, else the station's local zone, else your computer's. Hover a time in the table for UTC.

Your height unit, last span, last station and height highlights are remembered with your account and follow you to other devices; the last station reopens the next time you open the panel. The start day and a Custom span are not kept, and nothing about tides is saved in a view or a share link. When the panel is too narrow for one row, the controls wrap onto a second line, with ft / m and the highlights kept together, and the panel's smallest height grows by that line.

A weak-and-variable current station publishes no prediction, so its row shows only the station — ‹, its name and type, Zoom to and a greyed Print — with no dates, span, unit or zone note.

Reading the graph and the table

A tide station's graph is the predicted height above its datum — MLLW for NOAA stations, chart datum (CD) for CHS stations, Lowest Astronomical Tide (LAT) when Open Waters stands in (see Sources and coverage). On a 1d span each high and low is labelled on the graph (H 12.3 ft 04:12), highs along the top and lows along the foot; on 3d and 7d spans they are marked without labels, and on longer spans they are only in the table; labels that would overlap are left off so the rest stay readable. A Now line marks the present.

Drag the panel's top edge up to make the graph taller. The panel does not go lower than the height that shows the date controls, the whole graph and the source line beneath it; the collapse control folds it down to its title bar at any height. On a narrow panel (the Layers panel open on a tablet) the table moves under the graph with its first rows in view, and extra height is shared between the two; the table scrolls, the panel itself never does. On a dark basemap or the dusk and night chart palettes the station arrows and bars take a light outline and brighter colours so they stay readable.

Point at the graph to read any moment. A vertical line follows the pointer and shows the time and the value there: the height, or the current's speed and direction (F 1.8 kt 045°T). Every station arrow and bar on the chart moves to that moment as you go. Click the graph to pin the time. The line stays, in amber, with its value beside it and its time on the tag at its foot, and a small ✕ sits just above the graph at its top, or beside the time tag at its foot when the graph's title or legend is directly above the pin. The chart keeps showing that time while you pan, zoom or select other stations; it clears when you close the mode or reload the page. Select the ✕ (its tooltip reads Clear pin; Tab to it and press Enter or Space from the keyboard), or press Esc, to return to the present. Choosing dates that leave out the pinned time removes the pin. Pins are not saved. With the station list showing, a pinned time shows only on the station symbols; press Esc or reopen a station to clear it.

A subordinate station has predictions only at its highs and lows, or at slack and maximum flood and ebb. Its graph marks each of them with a dot and joins them with a dashed line labelled between highs and lows (interpolated) or between slack and max (interpolated). The line runs across all the dates shown, from midnight at the start to midnight at the end: before the first event and after the last it heads for the nearest event outside the dates, which the table does not list. The readout as you point at the graph, and the station's bar or arrow on the chart, follow the same line at any time in the dates. Where no event falls within about 13 hours beyond an end of the dates, the line stops at the event nearest that end, and neither the graph nor the chart gives a value past it. The dashed line is a guide to the shape, not a prediction; use the event times and values.

A current station's graph is the predicted speed in knots, flood above the zero line and ebb below, with slack and each maximum flood and ebb marked. On a 1d span they are labelled: maximum flood along the top, slack along the zero line and maximum ebb along the foot. A row of arrows beneath shows the predicted direction of flow (true). A NOAA current station can list several bins: choose the depth that matters to your draft.

The speed graphed is the part of the flow along the station's flood and ebb directions. At maximum flood or ebb, when the stream runs along them, it is the full predicted speed; as the stream turns through slack it falls smoothly to zero and rises again on the other side. When the stream sets across the flood and ebb directions — near slack, or at a station where the flow rotates — the graph, its readout and the station's arrow show less than the full speed of the water. The direction row, and the slack and maximum times and speeds in the table, are the predictions as published.

The table beside the graph lists each event with its time, High or Low (or Slack, Max flood, Max ebb), and the height or speed; F 1.8 kt is a flood and E 2.1 kt an ebb. The height column's heading names the datum: Height (MLLW), Height (CD) or Height (LAT). Hover a time to read it in UTC. A long span's table scrolls inside the panel. On a tide station it can also list, in muted rows, the times the tide crosses your highlighted heights (see Highlighting heights).

To use an event's time as a waypoint ETA, point at its row and select the copy button beside the time, or right-click the row and choose Copy time for ETA. The time is copied in the zone the panel names, followed by that zone's offset from UTC, for example 2026-09-27 1019 UTC-8, and Copied shows briefly in the row; the button's tooltip shows the text. Paste it into a waypoint's ETA cell in the route editor: the offset travels with it, so the cell takes the same moment whatever the waypoint's own time zone, and shows it in that zone.

Highlighting heights

On a tide station, the controls to the right of ft / m mark the heights that matter to your passage, for example the least water for a bar crossing or the most for an overhead clearance:

• Above shades the graph green above the height in its box.
• Below shades the graph amber below the height in its box.
• Include in table adds the times the tide crosses each ticked height to the events table, among the highs and lows. It is on until you clear it, and greyed out while neither Above nor Below is ticked.

Tick Above or Below and type the height in the box that appears beside it, to one decimal, in the panel's unit; clearing the checkbox hides the box again and keeps the height you typed. Heights are measured from the station's datum, as the graph is: MLLW for NOAA, chart datum (CD) for CHS, LAT when Open Waters stands in. Each height draws a line labelled at its right end, for example Above 2.0 ft, and the graph's height scale stretches to keep it in view. Switching between ft and m shows the same heights converted, to one decimal, without changing them. The heights apply to every tide station you open and are remembered with your account; current stations do not show these controls.

With Include in table on, each crossing is a muted row in the events table, in time order with the highs and lows: Rises above 2.0 ft where the tide comes up through a height, Falls below 2.0 ft where it goes down through one, at either height. The row has no height of its own and its time is to the nearest minute; copy it for an ETA as you would an event's time. A tide that only reaches a height and turns back is not listed. On a subordinate station the crossings are read from the dashed line, so they are estimates between the predicted highs and lows, not predictions.

Printing a station's predictions

Select Print on the row above the graph to print the station shown. It is greyed out until that station's predictions have loaded, and a weak-and-variable current station, which has none, cannot be printed. The sheet opens in a new browser tab, reading Preparing the print sheet… for a moment while the station map is prepared. If your browser blocks the new tab, a line under the date controls reads The browser blocked the print window. Allow pop-ups for this site and try again. Allow pop-ups for Plotroom and select Print again; the line clears.

A row at the top of the sheet, which does not print, holds, in order:

• Orientation — Portrait or Landscape.
• Include map, ticked unless you cleared it last time. Clear it to print without the station map; the sheet then opens at once, without waiting for the map. Tick it again to bring the map back: on a sheet opened without it, the sheet reads Loading the station map… until the map arrives.
• The sheet's own Print button.

Your orientation and Include map choices are remembered in this browser. The printed sheet carries, in order:

• The station's name, Tide predictions or Current predictions with its region, and its Provider (NOAA · harmonic), Datum (tide stations: MLLW, Chart datum, or LAT when Open Waters stands in), Units, Bin (a NOAA current station with several depths) and Range, then the panel's zone note (Times in UTC-8 (route zone)) and when the sheet was generated.
• The graph, drawn as the panel draws it — the same dates, time zone, height unit and highlighted heights — with each event labelled wherever the label fits: highs or maximum flood along the top, slack along the zero line, and lows or maximum ebb along the foot. The Now line drops its label where it would cover an event's.
• The source line, as under the panel's graph. A licence link shows its web address.
• Every event in the dates shown — Time, Event, and Height (MLLW), Height (CD) or Height (LAT), or Speed and Direction (degrees true, blank at slack) for a current station. With Include in table on, the crossings of your highlighted heights print among the events in muted rows, as in the panel.
• Beside or below the table, a map of the waters around the station: north-up, roughly 10 to 20 nautical miles across, from the NOAA ENC chart with OpenStreetMap filling areas outside chart coverage, with the station marked by a red ring and its name. If the map cannot be prepared, the sheet reads Station map unavailable above the table and prints everything else.

The sheet fits one page whenever it can. The graph keeps its size, and the map takes the room the first page has left. In Portrait it sits below the table, as wide as that room allows; when the table leaves too little room beneath it, a smaller map sits beside the top of the table instead. In Landscape it sits beside the table. Only the events table runs onto further pages, with its headings repeated on each and no row split between pages, so a long span prints the header, graph and map on the first page and the rest of the table after it.

Sources and coverage

Stations come from NOAA CO-OPS (United States) and the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS). The line under the graph names the source that answered:

• NOAA CO-OPS for a NOAA station.
• Canadian Hydrographic Service · Not for navigation · CHS licence for a CHS station. CHS predictions are Crown copyright and licensed on condition that they are not used for navigation; CHS licence opens the licence agreement.
• Open Waters (TICON-4 harmonic fit); CC BY 4.0 when Open Waters stands in for CHS (below). The licence name — or Station licence when the station does not name one — opens the licence of the Open Waters station used.

When CHS is not answering, or a Custom span longer than about eight weeks is chosen, a CHS tide station's heights come from the nearest Open Waters station within 2 km, where one exists and is licensed for this use. The line under the graph then names Open Waters and that station's licence, the graph is labelled Height above LAT and the table Height (LAT): these heights are above Lowest Astronomical Tide, not CHS chart datum, and can differ from CHS's own predictions. Current stations never use this substitute. CHS's own predictions return once CHS answers again.

Tides beside the route editor

While you edit a route, the tides panel shares the bottom drawer: its toolbar shows two tabs, ROUTE EDITOR and TIDES & CURRENTS. Opening the editor brings its tab forward; selecting a station on the chart, the rail icon, or Tides and currents here brings the tides tab forward without ending editing. The route table keeps its place while hidden. ✕ closes only the tab in front: on the editor tab it ends editing and leaves the tides panel open; on the tides tab it closes Tides and currents and leaves the editor open. The drawer's height and collapse control are shared by both. When the tides tab comes forward in a drawer lower than the tides panel needs to show its whole graph, the drawer rises to that height.

Currents along a route

Plotroom applies predicted currents to a saved route's timing in Weather's With currents mode, with the route editor's Currents button, and in Speed alternatives. Planned leg speeds are always speeds through the water: the currents change only the speed made good along the track and the arrival times. They never change the route, its schedule, or anything exported to the ECDIS by themselves; a route's speeds change only when you save a speed alternative as a Draft or choose Update current route.

At each point along the track Plotroom uses, in order:

1. The nearest NOAA or CHS current-prediction station within 3 nautical miles — the stations this mode shows, at the depth its panel opens on. A subordinate station's current between its slack and maximum times follows the standard tidal current table curve; a weak-and-variable station counts as no current.
2. Otherwise the Copernicus Marine ocean-current forecast: the modelled surface current — circulation, wave-driven drift and tide together — over North American waters between 10° N and 75° N, from the 180° meridian east to 40° W, out to about ten days ahead. Labels call it Model.
3. Otherwise nothing: that stretch is sailed at its planned speed and counts as uncovered.

Plotroom steers the heading that holds the planned track, as in the current-sailing problems of Bowditch: a cross-current is met by heading into it, and only the along-track part changes the speed made good. Where a cross-current is stronger than the ship's speed through the water the track cannot be held, and the route editor says cannot hold the track. Stops are kept, and a fixed ETA is compared with the arrival under currents rather than met; only Speed alternatives choose speeds that meet it.

If NOAA or CHS cannot be reached, the affected stations fall back to the forecast and the result names them — Station predictions unavailable for …; the model was used there. Such a result is not kept, so run it again later to include the stations.

When predictions do not appear

• Weak and variable current — no prediction is published: the station publishes none. Choose a nearby current station.
• No predictions in this range: the station has no predictions for those dates. Try other dates or another station.
• A message with Retry: the service refused the request or the connection failed. Check your connection and select Retry.
• CHS is unavailable — retrying in 42 min (or NOAA): after repeated service failures Plotroom stops asking that source for up to an hour. Stations from the other source keep working. Select Retry to ask again now; reloading the page also ends the pause.
• Loading predictions… for a while: long spans take several requests, and CHS answers a week at a time.
• Station map unavailable on a print sheet: the chart for the station's surroundings could not be prepared, for example with the connection down. The rest of the sheet is complete; select Print again later for the map. On a sheet opened with Include map cleared, ticking it asks the Plotroom tab that opened the sheet for the map; with that tab closed, the line appears at once, or after about 20 seconds when the connection hangs. Select Print in Plotroom again.
• Stations show plain symbols instead of arrows and bars: zoom in until the clusters open, select Today when the panel's dates leave out the present, and wait while stations loading shows. Stations far from the chart's centre load only when the chart is centred nearer them. A source paused after failures leaves its stations plain until Retry or the pause ends.
• No Rises above or Falls below rows: check that Above or Below is ticked and Include in table is on. Compare the height's line with the graph: a tide that stays on one side of it, or only reaches it and turns back, in the dates shown has no crossing to list.

Saved views

Named snapshots of your map — layers, camera, and settings — that autosave as you work and sync across devices.

Every account has a Default View, seeded automatically the first time you sign in; it can be renamed but never deleted. Whichever view is active continuously autosaves your current state — the loaded routes, resource layers, custom rasters, overlay groups, Web Layers, vessel tracks and their display range, the Planned Surveys year and ship filter, and the map's position and zoom — plus layer opacity and other display settings, the selected basemap, ENC on/off and transparency, chart dim, depth display, route-leg labels, and Planned Surveys visibility — a few seconds after you stop interacting with it, with no save button to press. Your chart display setup rides along too: the feature types you have on, the symbol, boundary and text choices, which standard setup you are on, and the Source quality overlay. Signing in on any device restores your active view exactly as you left it, camera included. If you start clicking before the view has finished loading — on a slow connection, say — what you opened is merged into the view as it lands rather than replaced by it, and the view keeps its own layers too. Your three depth-contour values are the exception: they belong to your account rather than to any one view, so switching views changes the chart's detail and colours but never the contours themselves.

The Views dialog

The bookmark icon in the top bar, next to the Day/Night toggle, opens the Views dialog: a list of your saved views, newest first, with their name and when each was last switched to (or, for a view you've never switched to, when it was last updated) — the list is ordered on exactly that time, so the rows read newest to oldest top to bottom — and a marker on whichever one is active. Switching to a view brings it straight to the top. Once you have more than one saved view, the bookmark icon itself also carries the name of the view you're on — shortened if it's long, with the full name in its tooltip — so the top bar always shows which setup is active. Switch makes another view active, loads its layers and camera, and closes the dialog once the view has applied; Save current view as… at the bottom of the list creates a new view from what's on the map right now, while New blank view creates and opens an empty one under the same typed name — the chart clears to just the basemap and chart layers, the camera stays put, the blank view starts saving as you work, and the dialog closes the same as a Switch does; Rename (or double-clicking a row's name) renames it inline; Delete asks you to confirm, naming the view, and isn't offered on the Default View — deleting the active view falls back to the Default View automatically. While any change to your views is still saving, every control in the dialog waits, including a confirmed delete.

Map snapshot

The camera button beside the bookmark saves the chart as a PNG image or, while the view is north-up and level, as a georeferenced GeoTIFF. See Saving the view as an image.

View links

Share link on a view in the Views dialog copies a link that reproduces that view's layers and camera for whoever opens it — the routes, resource layers, custom rasters, overlay groups, and Web Layers it had showing, their display settings, the selected basemap and ENC settings, chart dim and depth display, route-leg labels, the Planned Surveys visibility, year and ship filter, and the exact map position and zoom. Vessel tracks and their range are not part of a view link. Neither are the three depth-contour values: those follow each account, so whoever opens the link sees the same depth mode and transparency but their own contours, coloured to their own settings.

Opening a view link replaces the layer categories the link carries — including routes and overlay groups — with what the link specifies, and moves the map to its exact camera position. A carried active route becomes active. Your loaded vessel tracks and their date range are left as they are. The link opens as a temporary, unsaved view: a prompt then offers Save as new view (name it and keep it), Replace current view (overwrite the view it displaced), Save over another view… (pick an existing view to overwrite), or Just look (keep browsing without saving — switching to another view discards it). On mobile the prompt simplifies to Save & open (name it and keep it) or Cancel (revert to whatever was showing before the link).

You can open another view link in the same Plotroom tab, including while the map is loading. Wait for the shared-view choice before deciding whether to save it or keep browsing.

Any route or layer in the link you don't have access to is skipped rather than blocking the rest of the link, with a notice next to the views icon that some routes or layers in the view aren't available to you. The notice appears after you finish the save-or-browse choice, so you can take your time choosing without missing it. Because a view link can carry content — a route, a personal or ship raster, or a user-drawn overlay group — that other users can't see, sharing one while any such item is loaded shows a notice that the link includes layers other users may not see.

Route, overlay, raster and approval links load and zoom to their named target. If you have two or more custom saved views in addition to Default, choose a saved view first; it restores that view before the target is loaded. The linked route, overlay or raster is added to that view alongside its own layers — unlike a view link, it replaces nothing.

Ship positions & tracks

Where the rest of the fleet is right now, and where each ship has already been.

Live ship positions

Check Ship positions in the layers panel to show the whole fleet on the map — a single on/off toggle, not per-ship. Positions draw above every route and overlay, so a ship icon is never hidden behind a plotted leg or a drawn object. A vessel that is making way renders as a heading-rotated ship icon, and that covers every underway navigation status the feed reports — Fishing, Restricted in Ability to Maneuver, Constrained by Draught, and the rest, not only a plain "under way". Where the feed carries speed and course over ground, a short vector runs ahead of the icon to where the ship will be in six minutes; a target reporting heading alone is turned to face the way it points and draws no vector, rather than one invented from nothing. Only a vessel at anchor, moored, or aground renders as a plain circle with no speed or course shown (a moored ship reporting way over ground is a feed error, not real motion). Click a marker for a popup with the ship's name, position, heading, navigation status, how old the fix is, and its source (AIS via the fleet hub, or a ship relay); a moving vessel's popup adds speed and course over ground, left out entirely for a vessel at anchor, moored, or aground since neither applies to a stationary ship.

While a route is being edited, or a drawing tool is armed, a click on a marker belongs to the editor instead: the waypoint, or the drawing's next point, goes exactly where you clicked and no popup opens. Click on the ship's marker to put a waypoint at its reported position. Finish editing or drawing to open the popup.

Positions refresh every 15 minutes, and the fleet source can itself be behind real time by longer than that. Check the age shown in the popup; a marker fades once its fix is more than 3 hours old. The toggle state is remembered on your account.

A vessel can also send its own GPS fix straight to Plotroom instead of waiting for the fleet feed to carry it. Where that is set up, the ship's own computer posts a position every few minutes, the popup names ship relay as the source, and the marker is minutes old rather than hours. The two sources never fight: whichever fix is newer is the one on the map, so a fresh pushed position is not replaced by an older fleet-feed reading, or the other way round. An officer sets this up for their own vessel on the Vessel tab of Ship configuration.

Vessel tracks

Past track history for every fleet ship that has one lives under Resources in the library, alongside the other shared reference layers — open the Tracks tab there to load a ship's track onto the map, where it then appears in the layers panel's Vessel tracks section like any other layer. Right-clicking a track row offers Zoom to layer, fitting the map to its extent (loading the track first if it isn't already on the map), and Unload layer once it is. Selecting a loaded track shows its Display range control — Day, Week, Month, Year, All, or a custom date range — which applies globally to every track currently on the map, not just the one selected. New accounts default to Month; once you change it, your choice is remembered. With a loaded track selected, click at or near its drawn line to read the observation time at the chosen track point — in UTC, and in the local time of that position. Out at sea that local time is the civil time of the nearest coast within about 250 NM, so a fix in the middle of the Bering Sea reads in Alaska time; beyond that distance from any coast the time is shown in UTC alone. Clicking directly on a vessel's live position marker opens that marker's popup instead.

Click a track row to select it — the same Shift-click and Ctrl/Cmd-click rules as the Routes and Overlays tabs extend the selection to several ships at once — and a Selected bar opens above the table with the tab's three operations:

• Export GeoJSON… and Export GPX… download the selected ship's (or ships') track points. Either one first asks for the date range to export, opening on the Display range's presets (Day, Week, Month, Year, All, or Custom dates) and its current choice. GeoJSON needs no planning role, and re-importing that file with Import track restores the same segments with each point's exact recorded time. GPX writes one track per ship, one segment per continuous run of fixes, and the recorded time inside every point that has one, for chart plotters and GIS tools that read GPX.
• Delete date range clears only the points inside the displayed range, and is offered only while the Display range is something other than All.
• Clear track deletes the selected ship's (or ships') entire track history.

The two clearing actions are offered to a NAV-grade officer (NAV, OPS, or XO), the CO, or an administrator — never a Watch Officer — and, other than for an administrator, only for their own vessel: a selection that includes another ship's track omits the clearing actions. Importing likewise targets your own vessel only. Every member still sees every ship's track — authority limits changing history, never viewing it. Both open the same confirmation dialog, which names which of the two things is about to happen and, for a multi-ship selection, how many ships it covers. A multi-ship clear is all-or-nothing: either every selected ship's points are cleared, or nothing changes and the message states the reason.

A planning role — Watch Officers included — can bring track history in with Import track, at the bottom of the tab: pick the ship and a date range to pull from the fleet's own source (SAMOS, with N-PAD filling in any days SAMOS lacks), with progress shown per day and a retry on a partial failure — or upload a .geojson file directly, including one an Export GeoJSON… produced earlier.

Every live position source (see Live ship positions) also leaves its fixes on the track: a ship sending its own position directly, and the fleet feed for ships that do not. They fill the gap between nightly imports rather than forming a second history: each one is dropped once it is a day old, and sooner than that where the nightly import has already covered the same time at finer resolution. Until then they are ordinary track points — they draw, read, export, and clear like any other fix. Clicking a track opens its popup at the point you clicked on the line and reports the position and time of the nearest recorded fix.

Settings & profile

Your account preferences live in the profile chip; your ship's operating parameters live in Ship configuration.

Your profile

Click your avatar in the header to open your profile. It holds your first and last name, your rank (ENS, LTJG, LT, LCDR, CDR, CAPT, or Civilian — NOAA Corps / uniformed rank), and a display name that's auto-built from rank and name unless you override it. The display name is what shows on comments and route history; your rank additionally appears on passage-plan approval signatures once it's set (for example, "LCDR J. Doe (CO)") — leave it blank to omit the rank from signatures. Your vessel assignment is shown but locked (an administrator sets it), and a capability list shows what your current role lets you plan, submit, curate, and approve. Watch officers see a Request NAV role button here, which files a request your CO reviews.

A Scientist or Chief Scientist has no single vessel, so the profile shows the science role and, in place of a vessel assignment, the list of associated ships — the vessels whose libraries you can read and whose Shared libraries you can be given access to. Like a vessel assignment, it is shown but locked: a fleet administrator sets it. Until one is added the row reads that no ships are associated yet, and the capability list says the same thing it always does — what this role lets you do, which for science personnel is drafting your own material rather than running the ship's.

Your Coordinate format is set here, with a worked example beside each choice: DD (decimal degrees, 47.623450° N), DDM (degrees and decimal minutes, 47° 37.4070′ N), or DMS (degrees, minutes and seconds, 47° 37′ 24.42″ N). It governs every position you read — the cursor readout under the chart, the coordinate-entry dialog, position and observation popups, the route table's Lat and Lon cells, and the Bounds shown for a layer in the Library. It belongs to your account, so it follows you to any machine you sign in on. Typing a position back into a route table cell is not restricted to the chosen format: any of the three notations is accepted, with or without N/S/E/W, and a value that cannot be read leaves the cell as it was.

Your default theme — Day, Night, or Auto — is also set here; it's what the app opens in on sign-in. Sign out is at the bottom of the same panel and returns you to the sign-in screen.

Delete my account

The last row of the profile is Delete account, and it says first what becomes of your own work: ship's company hand their personal routes and layers to their CO, and a science account's are deleted. Delete my account… does not delete anything — it emails you a link carrying Confirm deletion and Keep my account, good for 24 hours. Only the mailed link runs the deletion, and only while you are signed in as yourself; Keep my account cancels the request and works even signed out. Asking again replaces the outstanding link, and using either one retires both.

Confirming closes the account rather than erasing the person: you can no longer sign in, and you leave the roster, the crew list and every library's member list, while your comments, approvals, route history and feedback stay exactly where they are, credited to the closed account. Your saved views and weather routing runs go with it, and anything you filed on a ship, fleet or shared library stays on that shelf. If you are the fleet's last administrator, Plotroom refuses: promote another administrator first.

Ship configuration

Click your ship's name in the header to open Ship configuration: safety parameters (draft, the vessel's default safety depth, and the shallow/safety/deep contour values that drive depth shading and route checks), solver limits, new-route defaults, navigation regime bands, the boundary distances that seed MARPOL waypoints, the vessel's default Weather color scales, an ECDIS-brand setting, the RTZ schema version this vessel's route exports are written in, and a change history. Ship's company can view their vessel; editing is limited to an administrator or the ship's own CO or NAV-grade officers (NAV, OPS, XO). Science personnel do not open this panel.

Preparing a newly added vessel? Follow Initial Ship Setup before creating operational routes.

Ship's company see only their own vessel in this panel. Administrators use the vessel selector to choose any vessel. A science account has no Ship configuration entry: a route uses its owning ship's settings after adoption, while a personal shipless route uses the stated shipless defaults. Use Chart display for personal chart contours and portrayal choices.

Safety depth, the first field on the Safety tab, is this vessel's default for the Safety depth box in Chart display — the depth that decides which soundings print bold and which print grey. It is a chart-display default only: it does not move the safety contour, and the route tools do not measure against it. Anyone aboard can adjust the value in Chart display for their own chart; left blank here, the box falls back to the safety contour.

Safety contour, on the same tab, is the one clearance value the route tools work to: AUTO REGIMES and ROUTE CHECK measure against it, snapped to the nearest charted contour, and both stay greyed out on a vessel that has none set. It is stated directly rather than worked out from another field: the Draft on the Vessel tab is the hull figure for the RTZ export and does not enter the check.

Position push, on the Vessel tab, lets the ship's own computer send its GPS fix straight to Plotroom instead of waiting for the public fleet feed — see Live ship positions for what that changes on the map. The row reads Not set until someone who can edit the vessel presses Generate, and Set on the issue date afterwards. Generate shows the new token once, in a read-only box with a Copy button and the address the ship posts to beside it; copy both to the ship's computer while they are on screen, because the token is never shown again. Pressing Generate on a vessel that already has one replaces it, and the old token stops working immediately, so the ship's computer needs the new one. Revoke switches the direct feed off and the vessel falls back to the fleet feed. Every generate, replace, and revoke appears on the History tab — the token itself never does.

Clear an optional numeric field and leave it blank to remove that setting. A saved Safety contour change immediately updates analysis for an open route attached to that vessel.

Library

The Library is where every route, overlay, raster, and vessel track lives. Open it from the Library button in the icon rail. It's a full-screen panel with a library tree on the left and a sortable list on the right.

The library tree

The tree at left reads top to bottom:

• Resources — the fleet's read-only reference layers: sea ice, survey and bathymetry rasters, NOAA's two chart-portrayal comparison layers, Planned Surveys (OCS), and vessel tracks. You can't rename or delete this collection, or file items into it. The layers inside it are read-only too, for every role — nothing renames, moves, files, or deletes any of them — though what a row's menu offers beyond load and show varies by layer; see that layer's own section below.
• All My Items — your ship's routes and overlays, your personal libraries, and anything you have made and not yet filed anywhere. This is the default view.
• Unorganized — just the unfiled items, a subset of All My Items. What's listed here is yours alone — administrators aside — until you file it; see Library tiers.
• Your personal and ship libraries, nested and collapsible with the ▸ caret.
• Recycle Bin (italic, with a small bin icon, at the bottom of the list) — routes, overlays, custom rasters, and saved web layers deleted within the last seven days that you are currently allowed to manage.
• A FLEET divider, then All Fleet (every shared fleet template in one aggregate view) and the fleet libraries themselves.

Each library row shows its item count and a scope tag — SHIP, PERS, or FLEET. Planners can add a library with the "+ New library…" row at the bottom of the tree; which scopes you're offered depends on your role (below).

A library name has to be unused within its own tier, and only there: your personal library names are yours alone to keep distinct, a ship library name has to be free on that ship, and a fleet name free across the fleet. The same name can therefore exist as one officer's personal library, another officer's personal library, and a ship library at once. Reusing a name within a tier is refused with "A library with that name already exists" — a message you only ever see about a library you can see. Renaming follows the same rule, and so does an administrator changing a library's type when the destination tier already holds that name.

Right-click a library you can organize for Rename, Move under ▸ (nest it under another library, or send it back to the top level — the submenu lists only the libraries it can go under, with its current location checked), or Delete library…. Delete asks you to confirm first, naming the library and how many routes, overlays, rasters, and web layers are filed in it. Deleting the library never deletes those items — they only lose this filing and stay in Plotroom, in Unorganized if it was their only library. A library holding sub-libraries of its own has to have them moved out or deleted first.

The tree refreshes when you open the Library and when you return to Plotroom.

The tree column can be resized: drag the grip on its inner edge, between the tree and the list, to give it more or less room — or focus the grip and use the ← and → keys. The width is remembered on this device. Where a name is too long for the column, hovering it shows the name in full.

Tick In current map view only, in the Library's top bar, to narrow the Routes, Overlays, Raster and Web Layers tabs to items whose extent overlaps the chart, whether or not you have opened them. Items with no extent — a route without waypoints, an empty overlay, a raster still processing, a web layer whose service declares no area — stay listed, as do Planned Surveys and LNM notices. A line under the list counts what the filter hides, with show all to clear it; the tab counts keep the full totals.

Restoring or permanently deleting an item

Deleting a route, ordinary overlay, custom raster, or saved web layer moves it to Recycle Bin. It immediately disappears from ordinary library views, the map, copied links, route tools, and exports, but the complete item remains recoverable for seven days. Built-in layers under Resources cannot be deleted and never enter the bin.

Open Recycle Bin and choose Restore to return an item. Every library filing whose library still exists returns with it. Route links are retained too and become usable whenever both linked items are active. If all of its former Ship or Fleet libraries were deleted while it was in the bin, the restored item appears under Unorganized. A Personal library containing a recoverable private item cannot be deleted until you restore or permanently delete that item. Restoring never recreates a deleted library.

The bin follows present authority. A shipmate who is currently allowed to delete the item may restore or permanently delete it, even when someone else originally deleted it. A transfer or role change takes effect immediately. Personal-only items remain private to their owner; an administrator does not see another person's private bin.

Choose Delete permanently… to remove one item immediately, or an available Empty Recycle Bin… to remove every item currently shown in your authority-filtered bin. Both ask for confirmation and cannot be undone. Items left in the bin are permanently removed automatically during daily cleanup after their seven-day recovery period ends. Expired items disappear from the bin and cannot be restored, even if cleanup is still pending. A custom raster continues to use storage while it is recoverable; its uploaded and prepared files are removed only at permanent deletion.

Library tiers and who can organize them

A library is exactly one of four tiers, and — outside of Resources and Unorganized — a route, overlay, custom raster, or web layer belongs to libraries of only one tier at a time: all-personal, all-ship, all-shared, or all-fleet. Filing something into a library of a different tier moves it out of its old tier entirely.

All Fleet and each fleet library carry an ORIGIN column, on every tab — Routes, Overlays, Raster, and Web Layers — naming the ship (or, for a personal upload shared up into the fleet library, the individual owner) that added each item. It's how you trace a shared item back to whoever contributed it.

Shared libraries

A Shared library is a workspace that belongs to one vessel and opens only to the people named on it — the ship's own crew and the science personnel associated with that ship. It sits between a ship library, which every member of the ship reads, and a fleet library, which the whole fleet reads: a Shared library is for a project, a survey, or a leg where a particular group needs to work together on the same material.

Shared libraries have their own SHARED band in the library tree, grouped under a heading per vessel, your own ship first. Each row carries the access you hold there — READ, WRITE, or ADMIN — so the tree answers "what may I do here?" without opening anything.

Who administers one. A Shared library is created by one of the vessel's senior officers — its CO, OPS, or XO — by a Chief Scientist associated with that vessel, or by an administrator: "+ New library…" in the library tree, with the shared scope, and a vessel picker beside it when more than one ship is open to you. Those same people — the ship's CO, OPS and XO, its associated Chief Scientists, and fleet administrators — administer every Shared library on that vessel, by role rather than by an entry in a list: they rename and delete it, and they decide who reads and who writes. OPS and XO are included because they are the officers who coordinate day to day with the embarked science party; NAV is not, since NAV curates the ship's own shelves but never runs an access list. Names must be unique among that vessel's Shared libraries; Personal, Ship, and Fleet names are unaffected.

Administering a library also means seeing what is in it. An item filed only into a Shared library — an overlay, a raster, a web layer, a route — is readable by that library's administrators as well as by the people granted Read only or Write, so an OPS or XO officer opens their ship's Shared work without needing a grant of their own.

Read only vs. Write. Everyone else gets one of two levels. A Read only member opens, inspects, and exports what is filed there, and sees no controls that would change it. A Write member also files references into the library and removes them again, and can create their own overlays, custom rasters, and web layers directly in it. Write is permission to curate, not to overwrite: nobody edits or deletes another person's item merely because it is filed in a library they can write. The item stays with whoever created it.

Manage access. Right-click a Shared library you administer and choose Manage access…. The dialog lists everyone eligible for that vessel — its active crew and the science personnel associated with it — with their role, whether they are crew or science party, and a selector reading —, Read only, or Write. There is no Save button: each choice takes effect immediately and is recorded in the audit trail, and — revokes. The library's administrators are not listed, because their access comes from their role and there is nothing to grant them.

When people move. Access follows the association it was based on. Changing someone's role, their vessel, or their ship associations removes the Shared access that depended on it, in the same step — a scientist who loses an association loses that vessel's Shared libraries, and crew moved to another ship lose the Shared libraries of the old one. Before saving, Fleet Personnel names the Shared libraries that person will lose, and warns if the change would leave a Shared library without a ship-level administrator (a fleet administrator is always the fallback there). Losing Shared access never hides something you can still reach another way — your own personal copy, your ship's libraries, a fleet library, or another Shared library you are still on.

Filing routes and overlays

You can file an item into a library three ways:

• Drag onto a library row — this moves the item: it comes out of every library it's currently in and lands in the one you dropped it on. For a route this is the only drag path that can cross tiers (a personal route dragged onto a ship library becomes a ship route), and it works the same way for routes, overlays, rasters, and web layers alike.
• Ctrl/Cmd-drag — adds the item to the target library without removing it from its current one, for a library of the same tier it's already in. All four kinds stay within one tier, so Ctrl/Cmd-dragging a route or an overlay onto a library of a different tier offers to add a copy there instead (see below), while a raster or a web layer — neither of which can be copied — is refused there with that reason.
• Right-click a route, overlay, raster, or web layer for the same filing options as menu items — Libraries ▸, a checkable list where clicking an unchecked library files the item into it and clicking a checked one unfiles it, and Move to library ▸ (crossing tiers). Both lists show every library you can see, not only the ones you can organize: a destination you can't file into — no permission there — reads greyed, and hovering it gives the reason. For a route or an overlay, a destination of a different tier from the one it's already filed under is offered as a copy instead (see below); for a raster or a web layer the same tier rule applies with no copy to offer, so that destination reads greyed as "Rasters stay within one library type — use 'Move to library' to switch" (and the matching sentence for web layers). On a multi-item selection the mark in front of a destination's name is ✓ when every selected item already belongs to it, a dash when only some do (hover it for the split), and blank when none do. Once more than one tier has a destination in it, both lists group the destinations under Personal ▸, Ship ▸, Shared ▸, and Fleet ▸, alphabetically inside each; a tier with nothing to offer is left out, and a list with only one tier stays flat. A writable Shared library is included in the Shared category; a Shared library you can only read remains greyed with the reason. With a specific library selected in the tree, the menu also offers a direct "Remove from <library>" item.

All three filing actions need both authority over the item and permission to organize the destination library. You can organize an item you created or one owned by your ship; administrators can repair ordinary items across ships. Reading another ship's item does not let you re-file, move, edit, or delete its source. A Shared library with Write access is the exception: you can curate a readable reference inside that Shared library without gaining authority over the source elsewhere. Which libraries the actions offer is your own permission on each library: your personal libraries at any role, Watch Officers included; your ship's libraries for NAV/OPS/XO and the CO; fleet libraries for the CO. So a Watch Officer files an item directly into their own personal libraries only — for a ship library, they ask instead (see Requesting an addition to a ship library) — while an account with no role assigned yet gets no Libraries ▸, Move to library ▸, or "Remove from <library>" item at all. The two submenus are also left out when they would open with nothing in them — no library you can organize, and nothing this item is already filed in.

Adding a copy. A route or overlay lives under one tier at a time. To keep it in another tier too, choose a copy destination: the destination reads "<library> (copy)" in Libraries ▸, and clicking it — or Ctrl/Cmd-dropping onto that library — asks first, then files a fresh copy there and leaves the original exactly where it is, under its own name and its own filing. It is the same copy Duplicate makes, so it arrives named "<item> (copy)" and belongs to you. The destination menus close when the confirmation opens. Check its named destination before choosing Add a copy or Add copies; to choose a different library, cancel and reopen the menu. Same-tier destinations file the original with no prompt, and Move to library ▸ moves rather than copies. A destination you can't organize at all, and a Shared library that won't take a science account's unfiled draft, stay greyed with their reasons rather than offering a copy. A multi-item Add to library ▸ files the whole selection in one click; when every selected item is filed under a different tier, so plain filing has nothing to do, a destination the Ctrl-drag gesture would copy into offers the same copy prompt instead of staying greyed. Rasters and web layers carry the same one-tier-at-a-time rule but have no Duplicate to copy from, so for them a different-tier destination is always the greyed reason rather than a copy — Move to library ▸ is how one of them changes tier.

Undo and Delete key

Filing actions taken while the Library is open — moving or adding an item between libraries, removing it from one, or filing a copy — can be undone. Press Ctrl + Z (Cmd + Z on Mac) or use the Undo button in the selection bar to reverse the most recent one, newest first, back through this Library session; closing the Library clears the history. Undoing a filed copy removes that copy and leaves the original where it was; you do not need to open the copy's editor. If someone else is editing the copy, wait for them to finish, then retry Undo. A refused reversal is reported in the Library's banner and stays available to retry. Deletions are not part of this undo — restore a deleted item from the Recycle Bin instead.

With rows selected, no text field focused, and no menu or dialog open, pressing Delete opens the same delete confirmation as the row's own Delete item, naming what you're about to send to the Recycle Bin.

Requesting an addition to a ship library

An officer who can read a ship library but not organize it — a Watch Officer on their own ship — can still bring an item to the ship's attention. Right-click the route, overlay, raster, or web layer and choose Request to add to <library>…. Where you can read several ship libraries the entries collapse into one Request to add to ▸ picker whose submenu lists them; where there is only one, it stays a flat entry naming that library. Either shape still lists a destination that cannot take the request, greyed with the reason on hover. A request covers one item at a time — a multi-item selection offers no request entry.

The request itself is visible where it will land: the item appears at the foot of that ship library's list as a row with a Pending chip naming who asked. The requester, the ship's officers (NAV/OPS/XO/CO), and administrators see the pending row; other crew do not. While the request is pending, the menu entry reads Requested for <library> so the same item can't be asked for twice.

The ship's NAV and CO are emailed, with Approve and Deny buttons that open the request in Plotroom — the decision is confirmed there, under the signed-in officer's own account, so the email link itself grants nothing. The same Approve / Deny choice sits on the pending row in the library for any officer who can organize it. Approving files the item into the library exactly as a direct add would (and simply completes if someone already added it meanwhile); denying changes nothing. Either way the pending row clears and the requester is emailed the outcome.

Dragging a multi-selected group of routes or overlays carries the whole selection. Dragging a single item onto a ship library you can read but not organize makes the same offer the menu entry above does: the row reads as droppable, and the drop asks first — the confirm names the consequence, and only on Confirm is the request (or, for a science draft, the submission) filed. Every other row you can't organize — and any multi-item drag, which no request can carry — still shows as no-drop while you drag over it; dropping on one is refused and nothing changes. Counts on the tree and in the item's Libraries column update as soon as the filing succeeds. The footer's + New route… and + New overlay… buttons prompt for a name before creating anything, and file the new item into whichever library is currently selected in the tree (or leave it unfiled otherwise).

Submitting a science route for consideration

A Scientist or Chief Scientist plans in their own personal libraries, and a ship takes a route on through the same request-and-review experience a Watch Officer uses. Right-click your own draft and choose Submit for consideration to <library>… — the destinations are the ship libraries of the vessels you are associated with, collapsed into one Submit for consideration ▸ picker when there are several and left as a flat named entry when there is one. Choosing a destination files the request straight away (dragging the draft onto that library instead asks first); give the route a name that says what it is for, because that name is what the officers deciding will see.

One ship at a time. A draft can be under consideration by a single vessel only. While a request is open, every other destination reads already under consideration and names the library holding the open request, so two ships can never adopt the same route at once.

The request appears as a Pending row at the foot of the target ship library, and the ship's NAV officers and Commanding Officers are emailed with Approve and Deny buttons that open it in Plotroom. The ship's NAV, OPS, XO, or CO — or an administrator — decides, from the email link or from the pending row itself. The review shows when the route was last changed and warns you when it has changed since the request was filed, because approving adopts the route as it reads now, not as it read then.

Approving adopts the route. In one step it leaves the scientist's personal libraries, becomes the ship's own route, and is filed in the library that was asked for; Adopted is written into the route's history alongside who adopted it. From then on it is an ordinary ship route and runs the normal submit, review, and approval workflow. The scientist keeps read access through their association with the ship, but the draft is no longer theirs to edit.

Denying changes nothing. The draft stays in the scientist's personal library, still private and still editable, and can be submitted again — to the same ship or a different one — once it is ready. Either way the pending row clears and the scientist is emailed the outcome.

Multi-select and export

In the Routes or Overlays tab: Shift-click selects a contiguous range, Ctrl/Cmd-click toggles individual rows, and a plain click returns to single selection. Right-clicking inside an active multi-selection shows only the batch actions — Add to library ▸, Move to library ▸, Unload N from map and a contextual "Remove N from <library>" for routes or overlays, plus a single-confirm Delete N routes… / Delete N overlays…. Right-clicking outside the selection collapses it to that one row first.

A batch action is offered only when it applies to every row in the selection. Delete N routes… appears when you can delete all of them, so the confirmation count is what actually moves to the Recycle Bin; if one selected route is beyond you, narrow the selection. A selection that includes a Resources layer — the shared sea-ice group, for instance — offers none of the filing or deleting actions, since nothing that changes an item may act on a read-only reference layer; Unload N from map is still offered, because unloading changes the map rather than the item. Add to library ▸ is the one exception to the every-row rule: a destination stays offered while at least one selected item can be filed there; the eligible items are filed and the Library's banner names each one that was not, with its reason ("Filed 1 of 2 routes into … Not filed: …"), so a mixed selection never silently does nothing. When plain filing has nothing to do — every selected route or overlay is already filed under a different tier — a destination the Ctrl-drag gesture would accept offers (copy) with the same add-copies prompt the drag shows, rather than greying.

Move, Remove, and Delete check the whole route or overlay selection before changing any item. If another person has begun editing one item, your authority does not cover one of them, or another required check fails, nothing in the selection is moved, unfiled, or sent to the Recycle Bin. The selection stays in place so you can correct it or try again. A successful action updates the whole selection together.

Unload N from map unticks every selected row that is currently loaded, in one action, exactly as unticking each row's own load checkbox would — the map and the layers panel follow along, and nothing is renamed, refiled, or deleted. The count is the number of loaded rows in the selection rather than the size of the selection, so the entry always says what the click will do, and rows already off the map are left alone. Because it changes only what is drawn, it survives selections the filing actions refuse: a fleet route you can't curate, or a batch mixing a Resources layer with your own overlays. A selection with nothing loaded keeps the entry, greyed, with the reason.

With two or more items selected, the Selected card lists every name. Export controls — on this multi-selection bar and on a single item's Selected card alike — pair one quick button for the most-used format with an Export ▾ dropdown listing every other format by name: routes offer RTZ, RTZ package (the zipped .rtzp container), GPX, Shapefile, and the two table exports, CSV (route table) and Excel (route table), overlays offer both Furuno user-chart XML and experimental Wärtsilä AIZ — every ship's overlays get both handoffs now, whichever brand is set on the ship — plus GPX, Shapefile, GeoPackage, GeoJSON, and KML (all as ZIP archives once more than one item is selected). The quick button is whichever bridge format the ship's own ECDIS brand leads with — Export AIZ on a Wärtsilä ship, Export XML on every other brand or none set — with the rest one click away in Export ▾. A route's Shapefile option needs at least 2 waypoints to draw a line — it's left off a route below that, and off a multi-route selection's dropdown the moment any selected route doesn't qualify. The passage sheet, PDF, and Duplicate actions are single-item only and disappear while multi-selected. Every export saves as a browser download named for what it holds — one file per selected item inside a multi-select ZIP — while Plotroom and your selection stay as they were. Switching tab or library scope clears the selection. What a route's RTZ export contains, and which version of the format it is written in, is set out under RTZ route exchange.

CSV (route table) and Excel (route table) hand over the route editing table itself, for a route that has to travel into a spreadsheet, a report, or somebody else's planning sheet. Both write one row per waypoint with the editor's own columns, under the editor's own headings in the editor's order: WP, Name, Latitude, Longitude, Rad, Stop, Crs, Dist, Cum, Spd, Min, Max, XTD (nm), Geo, PL1 m, PL2 m, Regime, Notes, Time, TZ, and ETA. They follow the table's reading too: the travel columns from Crs to Time describe the leg leaving each waypoint, so the last row leaves them empty and its Cum is the route total, while ETA is the arrival at that waypoint — which makes the first row's ETA the departure. Each ETA is the clock time in that waypoint's own zone, with TZ giving the zone as hours from UTC (+8, -2, +5.5). Where a leg's corridor is uneven the XTD (nm) column splits into XTD P (nm) and XTD S (nm), exactly as the table does. Positions are written in your profile's Coordinate format, the notation the table shows them in, so changing that setting changes the next export with it. CSV is one text file any spreadsheet opens; Excel is an .xlsx workbook with the route on its own named sheet, a short Route / Vessel / ETD / ETA block above the table, with each summary time labelled with its own UTC offset, a frozen heading row, and figures stored as numbers so they sort and total. Selecting several routes and taking either entry delivers a ZIP holding one file per route. Neither comes back in: a route returns to Plotroom through RTZ or GPX, or through Import CSV… for a bare position list.

Importing files

The library footer carries three import buttons, each accepting multiple files at once and importing them in order (so one bad file in a batch doesn't stop the rest — you get a count of successes plus a per-file reason for any failure). The result — 3 imported, or 2 imported, 1 failed: …; for overlays Imported 2 layers, or Imported 1 layer, 1 failed: … — appears to the right of the button row rather than beneath it, so the buttons stay where they were; a long message wraps onto its own line:

Select an overlay in Layers, then use Overlay presentation in its card to choose Current ship, Source, Furuno, or Wärtsilä. Current ship follows your assigned ship, then the active route's ship when you have no assigned ship. The choice previews only that layer and does not edit the shared overlay. Drawing and properties follow your current ship's ECDIS regardless of the preview. Without a current ship, Plotroom offers portable choices.

Cross-format downloads list visual substitutions, lost attributes, changed geographic portrayal, and whole objects omitted. Expand each object to review its changes, then acknowledge the listed losses to export the retained content. Counts may overlap. Cancel leaves the overlay unchanged. If it changes after review, start export again. An AIZ group with no retained objects downloads a conversion report instead of an empty chart. These rules also apply to batch downloads and route-companion overlays. Verify every retained boundary and intended danger setting on the vessel's certified ECDIS.

Each overlay file you pick or drop becomes its own overlay — two HYD93 files make two soundings overlays. A shapefile is the exception, because it is a set of sidecar files: pick or drop the .shp together with its .shx/.dbf/.prj (files sharing its name) and they import as one overlay, alongside any other files in the same selection. There is no point limit: a long, dense GPX track or a detailed shapefile imports with every vertex kept, exactly as recorded.

The .prj is the one sidecar worth checking for. A .shp carries no coordinate system of its own, so a .shp imported without its .prj can only be accepted when its coordinates are already longitude/latitude. A projected shapefile — UTM metres, State Plane, anything but degrees — must include the .prj, which is what lets Plotroom reproject it. Import one without it and the import stops and says so, naming the file and the missing .prj, rather than importing an overlay that draws in the wrong part of the world.

The Overlays tab carries one more import that needs no file: Import coordinates… takes a pasted list of latitude/longitude pairs and files it as a new overlay, as either Points — one point object per position — or a single Line through them in the order they were pasted (a line needs at least two positions). Name the overlay, paste the list, and it lands in whichever library is selected in the tree, exactly like an imported file. The accepted notations, and how problems are reported, are the same everywhere Plotroom takes a pasted list — see Pasting a coordinate list.

Both tabs also carry Import CSV…, for a position list exported from a spreadsheet or a survey plan. Choose the file and Plotroom works out the separator (comma, semicolon, or tab) and whether the first row is a header; correct it with the First row is a header box if a file starts with a row that only looks like labels. Then say which column holds the Latitude and which the Longitude — both required — and, optionally, which holds a Name. Cells take the same notations as a pasted list: decimal degrees, degrees and minutes, or degrees, minutes and seconds, with or without N/S/E/W.

Cells that contain line breaks are read the way the spreadsheet wrote them. A quoted cell holding a note that wraps, or two file names on separate lines, counts as one cell of one row, so an export whose rows span several lines in the file imports whole instead of arriving as a few readable rows and a pile of unreadable fragments. A doubled quote mark inside a quoted cell ("") reads as the single quote mark the spreadsheet meant by it — which is how a seconds mark survives in a 64° 51' 46.14" N cell. The line numbers in the preview, and in the skipped-rows notice, still point at the line the row starts on, so a row spanning three lines is reported at the first of them, and that is the line to go and correct. Rows containing only separators count as unreadable rows to skip, including in tab-separated files; blank physical lines are ignored.

The preview gives every row a status. A row Plotroom cannot read does not block the import: a notice names each skipped line and how many readable rows will import, and Import brings in exactly those — handy for a sheet with a notes block under the position table. Only a file with no readable rows at all refuses to import. An import lands in whichever library is selected in the tree, exactly like an imported file.

You can also just drag files from your desktop and drop them anywhere on the library panel. The panel classifies each file by extension, switches to the matching tab automatically, and — with a library selected in the tree — files the import straight into it (otherwise it lands unfiled). You can still drag a route or overlay row between libraries; files dragged from your computer are treated as imports.

A successful import — route, overlay, or raster — loads straight onto the map as well as landing in the library; there's no separate step to bring it into view. A raster only appears once its upload finishes processing, since there's nothing to draw before then.

RTZ route exchange

RTZ is the route-exchange format bridge ECDIS and ECS systems read and write, and it is how routes travel between Plotroom and the bridge in both directions. This section states exactly what Plotroom reads from a file, what it writes back, and what it leaves untouched, so you can predict what survives a round trip.

Schema versions. Plotroom imports both published versions of the format — RTZ 1.0 and RTZ 1.2 — and works out which one a file is from the file itself; there is nothing to choose at import. Exports are written as RTZ 1.0 — the version the fleet's own bridges write — unless the vessel is set to 1.2. Each ship carries an RTZ version setting on the Vessel tab of Ship configuration: leave it at 1.0 (fleet standard), or pick 1.2 (IEC 61174 current) for a bridge that reads the newer revision. The setting travels with the vessel, so every route exported for that ship — by anyone, from anywhere in the library — comes out in the version its bridge expects. Ships set to the Furuno ECDIS brand are the one exception: their exports use the Furuno FMD 1.0 dialect, which the version setting does not change.

What Plotroom reads, and what it merely keeps. An imported route becomes an ordinary Plotroom route: the parts of the file the route editor understands are read into editable fields, and everything else is stored verbatim and written back out unchanged on the next export. Nothing in a file is silently dropped for being unfamiliar.

The practical effect is that a route can go out to the bridge, come back, and go out again without losing the ECDIS's own annotations, and that a vendor's private data rides through Plotroom untouched rather than being stripped by the round trip.

Default waypoint values. A file may carry a block of default values — a standard turn radius, XTD, safety contour, or speed — that apply to any waypoint or leg which does not state its own. Plotroom applies those defaults on import, so the route editor shows the values the bridge would actually use rather than blank cells. A Wärtsilä NaviSailor export, for instance, arrives with its 0.12 NM default turn radius already filled in on every waypoint that did not override it.

Schedules. A route file may hold more than one schedule. Plotroom picks one as the plan — the one the route editor shows and solves — and the times you typed yourself are treated as fixed constraints the solver works around, exactly as typed values behave in a route drafted in Plotroom. Any further schedules in the imported file are kept as they arrived and written back on export, so a bridge's alternative calculation is still in the file when it gets home.

Waypoint identity across edits. Every waypoint carries an identifier and a revision number, which is how a receiving ECDIS tells an edited route from a different one. Plotroom keeps each waypoint's identifier stable for the life of the route — inserting or deleting a waypoint never renumbers the others — and bumps the revision of a waypoint whenever you change it or the leg leading to it. A waypoint you add starts at revision 0.

RTZP packages. Import Route also accepts .rtzp, the zipped container form, up to 10 MB compressed. Plotroom imports the route inside it; any attachments packaged alongside — pictures, notes, documents a bridge bundled with the plan — are ignored rather than imported. Plotroom exports the package form too: the library's Export ▾ dropdown offers RTZ package beside plain RTZ, for a bridge whose ECDIS takes the .rtzp container directly. The package holds the one route file, named for the route exactly as the plain .rtz download is, with the same contents and the same schema version; with several routes selected, RTZ package (zip) returns one .rtzp per route inside the usual archive.

When a file is refused, and when it only warns. An RTZ 1.2 file is checked against the published schema before it is accepted, and a file that fails is refused with the reason named in the import error — the element or attribute at fault — so you can take a concrete problem back to whoever produced the file. RTZ 1.0 files use a tolerant interpretation of the route format. Plotroom repairs harmless file padding, unescaped ampersands and invalid text characters in route or waypoint names where possible. A repair notice asks you to check the names; an unreadable character appears as a replacement symbol. Positions and navigation settings are not guessed or repaired. If damaged XML structure or values prevent a complete import, re-export the route from its source application and try again. One mismatch is deliberately not fatal: the format expects a file's name to match the route name inside it, so a file renamed along the way imports normally and simply says so, rather than being rejected over its filename.

Rasters in the library

Custom raster uploads (GeoTIFFs, JPEG2000 images and BAGs) file into libraries the same way routes and overlays do — scoped by the tree selection, with the same right-click Libraries ▸ toggle and Move to library ▸ item every other tab uses, and under the same rules: a raster belongs to libraries of one tier at a time, and a fleet library takes one from a CO who has authority over the raster itself — their own upload, or one their ship owns (see Library tiers and who can organize them). A raster you upload while a library is selected lands there directly. While a library you can't file into is selected — a fleet library for a non-CO, a ship library for a Watch Officer or scientist — the Import Raster button greys out with the reason as its tooltip; with no library selected the upload lands under Unorganized. The Raster tab's TYPE column names an S-102 or BAG file by its format (S-102, BAG); every other raster shows its display style instead (RGB, Single band, Multi-band, or Indexed — a BAG imported before the numerical pipeline existed still reads Multi-band) and an UPLOADED date column; click the NAME, TYPE, SIZE, or UPLOADED header to sort by it, click again to reverse, and a raster still uploading or processing stays below completed rows in either direction, including when sorting by SHIP. While files upload, each one's progress shows in a list above the raster table (see Uploading a custom raster). After transfer, the row's STATUS cell shows processing or an error until the raster is ready; the row stays in the same standard library table throughout. Canvas size is not a practical limit: processing works through the image in slices, so a small file covering a very large area at fine resolution — a whole survey region at 50 m, say — converts the same as a harbor-sized one. The upload FILE size is what's capped. The reference rasters under Resources are separate: they're built-in reference layers, sortable instead by NAME, ATTRIBUTION, or OBS DATE, and never appear in any other library.

Web Layers

The Web Layers tab holds uploaded KML/KMZ packages and map and feature services added by URL. Choose Add by URL, paste the service address, and review the detected layers, coverage, and attribution before saving. Plotroom supports WMS, WMTS, XYZ tiles, ArcGIS map, image, and feature services, WFS, and OGC API Features. WCS entries can be kept as references but cannot be drawn on the chart.

Add by URL also accepts WMS and WMTS addresses hosted through ArcGIS, including NOAA chart services, and a complete map or tile request copied from another viewer — a WMS GetMap or WMTS GetTile address carrying its own area, image size and format. Plotroom keeps the service address and any filter the provider added, such as a time or a query filter, and supplies the rest of each request itself, so the layer draws across the whole chart, including a layer already saved from such an address. If Plotroom cannot use the address, it reports that no supported web map service was found.

Choose Upload KMZ… to import a .kmz package or a standalone .kml, up to 32 MB. A package stays together as one layer: ground images, styled points, lines and areas, and legends. Dropping a .kmz into the Library selects Web Layers; dropping a .kml selects Overlays for editable placemarks. Use the Web Layers upload button when you want a standalone KML displayed as authored. Choose Browse… to select the file. The progress bar shows the upload percentage, then Preparing layers… until the package is ready to display. A dropped package shows progress in the Web Layers tab.

Select the package in the Layers panel. Under PARTS, check the folders you want to see; the initial selection follows the file. Legends and any published time range appear in this card. The opacity slider starts at 85% and adjusts every displayed map part; an explicitly saved opacity is retained. Saved views and shared links retain your part choices. Right-click the layer and choose Zoom to layer to use the file's opening view, when supplied, or its combined coverage. Click a feature in the selected package to read its data attributes. Overlapping features with data appear together in the popup. Rendered images and features carrying only a name, description, or time have no query cursor or popup; use their legends. Labels use feature names; color and line controls supply defaults for unstyled features.

Uploads allow at most 25 ground images, 32 million decoded image pixels, 10 legend images, 50 packaged icons, 5,000 placemarks, and 2,000 archive members. Highly compressed archives above a 10:1 ratio are refused. Linked documents, remote or refreshing images, 3D models, tours, and photo overlays are not displayed; the card names skipped content. A file containing only a link must be replaced with the linked document. Tiled KML image pyramids are not supported; use a GeoTIFF. The chart displays imagery only between 85.05° north and south, including imagery that crosses the 180° meridian. Time stamps are descriptive; packages do not animate or refresh automatically.

KML packages are browse-only: their features are excluded from Route Check and ECDIS exports. To import editable placemarks, use Import Overlay on the Overlays tab; its import note identifies skipped imagery and links. Plotroom is a planning aid. Verify plans and exports on the vessel's certified ECDIS against official, corrected charts.

Saved web layers can be filed, renamed, deleted, sorted, loaded, and shared through libraries like rasters, under the same rules — one tier at a time, a fleet library curated by a CO with authority over the layer, and Add by URL greyed out, with the reason as its tooltip, while a library you can't file into is selected. A loaded layer appears under Web Layers in the Layers panel. Its checkbox shows or hides it; right-click for Zoom to layer or Unload layer. Zoom fits the chart when the service reports its coverage; otherwise Plotroom says that the layer has no bounds. Web layers included in a shared view load for recipients who have permission to use them.

Select a loaded layer to adjust its opacity. Feature layers also offer color, line width, and labels based on a chosen attribute. The attribute list appears after the layer has loaded. An area's label follows the same placement rule as an overlay area's name: inside the shape, and on the middle of the visible part while only part of the area is on screen. Use Copy URL to copy the original service address for use in QGIS or another GIS. You may also add the address of a single ArcGIS map sublayer, such as …/MapServer/5.

With a queryable web layer selected, click the chart to inspect the feature or map value at that position. The popup identifies the layer and shows up to 12 attributes. Only the selected layer is queried. Drawing, route editing, bridge tools, and other selectable chart objects take priority, so finish or leave those activities before querying a web layer.

Tabs

Overlays, Raster, and Web Layers are always available, and so is Routes — except under Resources, which drops it: Resources holds background/information layers only, so there's no Routes tab there, and no LIBRARIES column on any of its tabs either (nothing under Resources belongs to a library, so the column would be empty). Tracks remains Resources-only in the other direction — ship tracks aren't library content, so the tab lists every fleet ship's imported track fleet-wide rather than anything tied to a library. Its SHIP column names the vessel whose track is shown. Navigating off Resources while Tracks is open falls back to the Routes tab automatically.

The selected tab is yours, not each library's: selecting a different library in the tree keeps you on the tab you were reading — empty there or not — so you can walk down a shelf of libraries comparing one tab across all of them. The only automatic tab change is reachability: leaving Resources while Tracks is open, or entering it while Routes is open, moves you off a tab that doesn't exist in the new place.

Fleet templates

A route filed in a fleet library is a shared template: it carries no approval workflow and no status chip, showing its origin ship instead. Any officer can use Copy to my ship… to duplicate a fleet template onto their own ship as a fresh draft, filed into a library of their choice. Non-CO/admin officers see only Copy link and Copy to my ship… on a fleet route's right-click menu; Commanding Officers and admins get the full curation menu.

Sharing, renaming, and other actions

The Selected card for a route, overlay or uploaded raster carries a Link button; Copy link on the row's right-click menu does the same. Anyone with access who opens a route's link sees that route loaded and active. An overlay's link loads and zooms to that group without changing the rest of the recipient's chart. A raster's link carries your current display settings for that raster — style, colors, Min and Max, band and opacity — and nothing else; Raster link copied. confirms the copy. Opening it adds the raster with those settings, selects it in the Layers panel and fits the chart to it. The recipient's other layers, and the settings of their other rasters, stay as they were; a raster already on their chart takes the sender's settings. There is no link for system references everyone already has, like the ASIP sea-ice overlay and the Resources reference rasters (BlueTopo, NCEI Bathymetry, and the rest).

Rename opens an inline text field on the row. Enter saves the new name, and so does clicking anywhere outside the field — what you typed is kept, not thrown away. Esc cancels, putting the old name back. A name left as it was, or emptied, simply closes the field and renames nothing; and if the new name is refused — another item in the same place already carries it — the field stays open with your text in it so you can change it. A connection failure closes the field and returns to the last displayed name; reconnect and choose Rename again to retry. Every inline rename in the Library behaves this way, on libraries, routes, overlays, rasters and web layers alike, as does renaming a saved view. You can rename a route your own ship owns wherever it is filed — including in a fleet library — if you are that ship's CO or one of its NAV/OPS/XO officers; the rest of what a fleet library protects is unchanged, so reversing, deleting, retracting, and reassigning a fleet-filed route stay as they were. Delete route… on routes, Delete layer on overlays, and the plain Delete item on rasters and web layers all ask you to confirm before moving anything to the Recycle Bin — the confirmation names the item being deleted, or how many are selected for a multi-selected batch of routes or overlays, so you can catch a mis-click — and unload the item's map layer if it was loaded. See Restoring or permanently deleting an item for the seven-day recovery period.

Neither Rename nor Delete — nor any other filing or moving action — is offered on a Resources layer, whatever your role. Beyond its load checkbox, what a Resources row's menu carries depends on the layer; see that layer's own section. A row whose menu would be empty leaves the right-click alone entirely, opening the browser's own menu instead of Plotroom's.

Duplicate makes an independent copy of the whole plan — every waypoint, each leg's speed, XTD, regime, and notes — as a fresh Draft named "<route> (copy)", or "(copy 2)" and on from there when that name is already taken, so copies never arrive indistinguishable from one another. Approval history, comments, and CO review flags belong to the original and stay there. Any approved member can duplicate a route or overlay they can read: the copy belongs to them, and the source is unchanged. Duplicating a route files the copy into every library the source is filed in that you have organizing rights over; a library you can only read is skipped, and a copy that lands in none of the source's libraries this way appears under Unorganized — private to you until you file it somewhere. A copy that stays on the route's own ship keeps its MARPOL boundary waypoints exactly as they were, locked and marked as MARPOL; a copy taken onto a different ship leaves them out, since boundary distances are configured per vessel — your own ship's crossings are worked out the first time you change the copy's geometry. Duplicating an overlay names its copy the same way, but always leaves it unfiled under Unorganized, since an overlay can't be filed into a library directly. As a non-librarian duplicating a ship route that lands unfiled, you're prompted afterward to file the copy into one of your own personal libraries — unless you have no personal libraries to offer it to.

Reverse route, offered on editable drafts, asks you to confirm before flipping waypoint order.

Assign to ▸ puts a route on a vessel. Where more than one vessel is on offer — an administrator, who may reassign any route to any ship — it is one submenu listing the fleet, with the route's current vessel marked ✓ and inert; picking another hands the route over and closes the menu. Where exactly one vessel is on offer — a ship's NAV/OPS/XO or CO claiming a route that belongs to no ship yet for their own vessel — the menu carries that single Assign to <ship> item directly, with no submenu to open. Reassigning a route filed in a fleet library stays with administrators, and a route someone else is editing greys the entry while their lease is held.

The filter field at the top of the main column ("Filter by name…") searches whichever tab is open — Routes, Overlays, Raster, or Tracks — by name as you type.

Column headings do the rest of the narrowing. A heading that can filter carries a small funnel beside its sort arrow; press it for that column's menu. While nothing is applied the funnel is a plain outline, and the moment the column starts hiding rows it fills in and takes the accent colour, with its tooltip naming what is applied — "Filtered: Fairweather" — so a short list always has a visible cause. Pressing the funnel filters without also re-sorting the column. On the Routes tab, SHIP and STATUS filter this way.

Administrators see every ship's routes, overlays, rasters, and web layers, so for them — and only for them — the Overlays, Raster, and Web Layers tabs also carry a SHIP column, sortable, with the same funnel for narrowing to one vessel; the Routes tab has always had one. Every other role's lists are already limited to what that role may see, so their tabs are unchanged and show no such column. The column is absent under Resources, whose reference layers belong to no ship, and an item that belongs to no vessel — a personal upload, a fleet template — reads as a dash, the same way a shipless route does on the Routes tab.

Route editor

The route editor is a waypoint table synchronized with the chart — edit a leg's numbers here or drag its waypoint on the map, and both update together.

Opening the editor

Select the route and choose Edit route on its card in the Layers panel, or right-click the route on the chart and choose Edit route "<name>". A CO reviewing a Submitted route sees Review edit on the card instead. A new route from + New route… or the Library's New route opens in the editor as soon as it is named. The editor docks along the bottom of the chart and can be collapsed to a thin strip with the grip control. Done editing on the card, or ✕ on the editor, closes it and returns the chart to browsing.

With the editor open, click the chart to add a waypoint at the end of the route, or click the active route's line to insert one into that leg. Drag a waypoint to move it and Ctrl-click it to delete it. A click over a ship's position marker adds the waypoint too, at the point you clicked, so a waypoint can go at a ship's current position; the marker's popup opens only while browsing. The exception is a tide or current station while Tides and currents is open: a click on its symbol selects the station, so click beside it to place a waypoint there.

With Tides and currents also open, the editor shares its drawer with the tides panel under two tabs, ROUTE EDITOR and TIDES & CURRENTS; ✕ closes only the tab in front. See Tides beside the route editor.

A route you may not edit — an Approved route, for instance — offers View route details on its card instead, and the right-click Edit route "<name>" does the same: the same route information table opens read-only, with every field visible and none editable. Close route details or ✕ closes it.

Submitted and Approved routes also offer ROUTE CHECK on the active-route card. The check is read-only; edit-only actions such as AUTO REGIMES and MARPOL waypoint changes stay unavailable there.

That card is the only place a check starts on a read-only route, so it shows the run as well: while the check streams, a progress bar sits directly under the button, reading Route check · Reading chart data… and then Route check · Leg 7 of 40 as the legs are checked, exactly as the bar in the route editor's toolbar does. The report replaces it. The bar belongs to the route it was started on — making another route active ends the check rather than carrying its leg count, or its result, onto a route it was never run against.

One route editor at a time

When someone is editing a route, it stays visible to everyone else but its edit controls are disabled. The route card names the editor and shows when they last saved; hover the note for the exact time. Opening the same route in a second tab under your own account is protected the same way, with a note that it is being edited by you in another tab.

Read-only inspection, comments, Route Check, exports, duplication, and library filing remain available. Another session cannot change the route or its approval status while the editor is active. Finishing or leaving the edit releases it promptly. Plotroom also releases an edit that has gone quiet — after a spell without changes, or when the connection drops. When that happens to you it arrives as a passing note naming the route, "Kodiak Approach was unlocked for editing due to inactivity.", not as an error: the latest saved version is reloaded and editing simply closes. If someone else has taken the route over in the meantime, the message says so and names them. There is no force-takeover button.

Columns

Right-click any header for a show/hide menu — Hide <column> plus an Unhide submenu for whatever's currently hidden. WP, Name, Crs, Dist, Spd, and Time are locked and always show; every other column can be hidden. The hidden set is remembered on this device. The SMG and ETA w/ currents columns appear only with a Currents result and are not in this menu.

The Name and Notes columns can be resized: drag the grip on the right edge of either heading to give the column more or less room, or focus the grip and use the ← and → keys. Resizing closes an open heading menu. Double-click the grip to put the column back to its starting width. Both widths are remembered on this device, and a route you can only read resizes the same way — the widths are yours, not the route's. The other columns keep their own sizing.

The XTD column collapses to a single symmetric field whenever every leg is symmetric; as soon as one leg is switched to asymmetric (via its Asym checkbox), every row splits into separate XTD P and XTD S columns.

Typed values fix constraints

Type a speed or an ETA and it becomes a fixed constraint the solver must respect — shown in bold. Right-click a fixed speed cell to Unset it back to solver-managed; clearing an ETA cell, or right-clicking a cell that already has one, unfixes it the same way.

Solving the schedule

Fill in whatever speeds, ETAs, and stops you know, in any mix, then click Solve. The solver takes departure time (ETD) from the first row's ETA cell and fills in everything else, reporting simply ✓ feasible or ✗ infeasible alongside any feasibility flags (a speed outside its limit, an anchor that can't be reached, and so on).

With no departure or arrival anchor, Solve calculates leg durations and the total voyage time, including stops, without inventing dates. Speeds must satisfy their limits. Enter a time anchor when you need dated arrivals or a saved-schedule weather preview. With an anchor, a successful solve fills the ETA column on every leg: typed ETAs keep their bold, accent anchor look, and the solver-derived arrivals it fills in around them render muted, so it's obvious at a glance which times are fixed and which are computed. The first row's ETD reads the same way: a departure you typed is bold, and a departure the solver worked back from your earliest fixed ETA is muted — clearing the ETD and solving again gives you a computed departure, not a new anchor. Changing a speed, speed limit, stop, regime, time anchor or route geometry clears calculated departure, arrival and the solved route total while preserving typed anchors. Undo and Redo restore planning inputs, not calculated times. Click Solve to rebuild the timeline. Routes that have never been solved retain their distance/speed estimates; individual leg times can estimate travel at the entered speeds even while the solved total is blank.

Between two fixed times, the legs the solver manages share one speed, and each of them is held inside its own Min and Max. A leg the shared speed would carry past its maximum sails at that maximum, a leg it would drop below its minimum sails at that minimum, and the legs that still have room take up the difference, so the fixed time is met exactly and every leg stays within its limits. A stretch is infeasible only when even every leg at its limit cannot add up to the time given: the table then marks each leg whose limit binds, shown at that limit, and says of the fixed time itself either that it cannot be reached or that the ship would arrive early and wait for it.

Clear speeds, beside Solve, blanks the speed on every leg the solver manages and leaves the speeds you typed untouched, so the next Solve works from the legs' limits and your fixed times rather than from whatever the last solve left in the column. It is one step and one Undo, and it is greyed out when there is nothing to clear.

ETA entry

Each ETA cell is a 24-hour text field (YYYY-MM-DD HHmm, with shorter forms like a bare HHmm accepted; a time may end with its time zone, such as UTC-8, UTC+5:45, -08:00 or Z, and is then taken as that moment and shown in the waypoint's own zone — a time copied from the tides panel carries one) plus a calendar-icon button beside it that opens an in-app date-and-time picker — a month grid to pick the day, plus a typed HHMM field for the time. A bare HHmm takes its date from the nearest known time already in the plan — the closest earlier waypoint's ETA, or the route's ETD when no earlier leg has one — rather than today's date. A blank picker shows a light HHMM prompt instead of filling the current time; clicking into the field clears the prompt, and an existing value reopens with its saved time. The time field takes four digits and validates on commit (00–23 for the hour, 00–59 for the minute); an out-of-range entry like 2460 is held on screen and flagged in red until you either correct it or press Escape, which discards the edit and restores the cell's last valid value. Set, or Enter after a valid selected date and time, fills and commits the cell exactly as if you'd typed the value yourself. Now fills and commits the current date and time in the cell's own time zone, to the minute, in one step. Focusing and leaving a field untouched, or entering an invalid value, never fixes it as an anchor. Either deliberate valid entry fixes the ETA as a solver anchor. The first-row ETD cell follows the same deliberate-entry, invalid-entry, and picker rules; right-clicking a cell that already has one (or the ETD cell, at the top of the column) offers Unset in place of the browser's own right-click menu.

Leg times and cell totals

The Time column shows a leg's travel time as soon as it has a speed, whether typed or solved — you don't need to run Solve first. The editor header shows the route's total time beside its total distance, both worked out from the same leg times so they read as soon as the legs do. The header total reads as days, hours, and minutes (DD:HH:MM — a two-day passage shows 02:07:45, not 55:45); per-leg Time cells stay hours and minutes. The total covers the whole voyage, so it also counts any stop time entered at a waypoint and can exceed the Time column added up — hover it for the same total in hours and minutes, and for how much of it is stop time. A leg with no speed of its own falls back to the route's default speed, and then to the ship's default cruising speed; only when no speed can be found anywhere does the header total stay blank, since the voyage length is then unknown rather than shorter.

Click a Dist or Time cell, then Shift-click or Ctrl-click others in the same column, to see the running total only in the floating tooltip, not repeated in the column heading. A time total of a day or more reads as days:hours:minutes, the way the overall route total does. The cells themselves stay read-only during selection, and clicking away clears it. Totals for rows selected with checkboxes are separate and appear in the column headings.

Currents

Currents, in the toolbar after Clear speeds, estimates how the predicted currents change the passage. It sails your saved plan from the saved ETD at each leg's planned speed through the water and works out the speed made good and the arrival at every waypoint. It changes nothing — no speed, no time, nothing in the route — so it is available on routes you can only read. It needs a saved ETD; without one it is greyed out with Set an ETD first — currents are estimated from the saved departure.

The result appears as a note at the right end of the toolbar and two extra columns:

• Currents: +0:42 overall — how much later (+) or earlier (−) the final arrival is than planned. Currents: no coverage means no leg had any current data. Hover the note for its full text, any remarks, and the stations and forecast used with their credits; when the toolbar is short of room the note ends in an ellipsis. A small ringed i beside it means the result has remarks — a fixed ETA missed under currents, or a station that could not be reached and was replaced by the forecast — and pointing at it reads them. A red note means a leg cannot be made good against the current, and names it.
• SMG, after Spd: the speed made good over the leg leaving the waypoint. Hover it for the current on that leg (for example Current 045° / 1.8 kt (Model)), the heading that holds the track, cannot hold the track when a cross-current is too strong, and how much of the leg had current data.
• ETA w/ currents, after ETA: the arrival at the waypoint through the currents, in the waypoint's time zone. Hover it for the difference from the planned arrival and, at a fixed ETA, how far the arrival misses it — the estimate never re-solves to meet a fixed time.

A dash in SMG means the leg had no current data at all — no prediction station within 3 nautical miles and outside the ocean-current forecast — so it is sailed at its planned speed. A dash in ETA w/ currents marks the first row and any waypoint after a leg that cannot be made good. The two columns are read-only, are not offered in the show/hide menu, and are never exported: the CSV and Excel route tables, RTZ and Furuno files carry your planned speeds and times only.

The result belongs to the route as saved. Any edit removes the columns and the note; press Currents again. A result for the saved departure is kept with the route for everyone who can read it until the route changes or the ocean-current forecast moves on, normally within two days, and is picked up when the route is opened in the editor. Currents along a route explains where the currents come from.

AUTO REGIMES and ROUTE CHECK

Both buttons need two things: a vessel on the route you have open, because they classify against that vessel's configured Safety contour, and the chart's list of charted contours, which they snap that depth to. They are greyed out for the moment the contour list takes to arrive, and stay greyed out on a route with no vessel or on one whose vessel has no Safety contour set. Another vessel selected in the header does not supply clearance for this route. If the contour list cannot be reached at all, Chart display says so and offers a retry. The map waits rather than opening chart data whose publication version cannot be confirmed. AUTO REGIMES prompts you first, listing each of the ship's configured regime bands together with its reference — measured from land or from the safety contour, per that band's own setting in the ship's configuration; either reference is valid, and a ruleset can mix both — alongside the usual Regimes only, Regimes + notes, or Cancel choice. It then fills the Regime column (and optionally Notes) for every leg, overwriting existing entries including manual ones, and reports back how many legs it classified and how many of those hit the 15 NM measurement limit (no matching land or safety-contour reference was found within that distance, so that leg's band is a floor rather than a precise measurement). ROUTE CHECK compares each leg's XTD corridor — the corridor as planned, widened by nothing — against water shallower than the snapped safety contour, land, and linked danger objects, without changing the route. Each leg's corridor is checked with rounded ends, a half-circle of its XTD around each waypoint, so where the XTD changes the check covers the wider XTD all round the waypoint, and a finding there can sit just outside the drawn taper. The holes of a danger area are open water: a corridor that stays inside a hole raises no danger, one that reaches the solid part does, and an area whose holes do not fit its outline is checked as solid. Its report names the contour it ran against.

The same corridor is also read against the charted areas the route runs through — caution areas, restricted areas, precautionary areas, military practice areas, seaplane landing areas, and marine farms. Each one is listed as a Charted area warning rather than a danger. The row names the area as the chart names it and says what the chart says about it — the restrictions a restricted area carries, and the first sentence of its chart note — with how far it lies from the leg's centerline, and (seasonal) where the area applies only for part of the year. Clicking the row outlines the area on the chart in amber, the calmer colour an advisory gets, rather than the magenta that marks a danger.

A check whose only findings are charted areas reports WARNINGS: things to read before you sail, not a breach of the vessel's clearance. Anything that does breach the safety contour still reports FAIL, and dangers are listed before the areas on the leg they share. The charted areas themselves arrive with the next weekly chart update; until then a check simply reports none, the same way a stretch of water that holds no such area does.

The top of the Check Results card gives the verdict — PASS, WARNINGS, FAIL or INCOMPLETE — then the number of dangers, the number of warnings when there are any (3 warning), the number of legs checked, and the contour the check ran against. The warning count carries a checkbox: clear it to hide the warning rows, so only the dangers are listed, and tick it again to bring them back. Dangers always show, and the verdict and every count describe the whole check, hidden rows included. When every row in the report is a hidden warning, the list reads Warnings hidden. Hiding warnings while a warning row is selected also clears its amber outline from the chart. Plotroom remembers the choice on this device for every later check, on any route.

Route Check follows each leg's rhumb-line or great-circle track, including crossings of the 180° meridian. Long routes can take longer to read; leave the report open until its result appears. Use RERUN to check again after changing the route or its safety contour. Repeated checks can finish sooner when the same chart reading is available. If Route Check reports that it is busy, wait a few seconds and try again.

A boundary waypoint counts as the line it stands on. Where one of the locked waypoints from Boundary Wpts splits a leg — the 3, 12, 24 or 200 NM crossing — the stretch of route on its seaward side is classified as at least that far from land, so an outbound leg leaving the 12 NM waypoint is not pulled into an inshore band by the corridor reaching back across the line. A leg that genuinely runs closer in keeps its measured distance: one heading back inside the line, or one passing an island on its way out. The distance quoted in the leg's note is always the measured one, and bands referenced to the safety contour are unaffected.

If any part of the checked corridor lies outside Plotroom's chart coverage, or required chart data cannot be read, Route Check reports INCOMPLETE. Findings from the readable charts and linked danger objects remain listed, but an empty list does not mean the route is clear. After a loading failure, use RERUN when the service is available. Auto Regimes and an explicit Boundary Wpts run stop with a chart-data unavailable message and do not change the route.

If one of these tools ends with The analysis stopped before returning a result, it stopped before finishing and the route is left as it was. Run it once more. If the same message returns, report it with Send feedback from the help dialog, copying the message as shown, including the counts in brackets at its end, and naming the route.

A CO editing a submitted route in Review edit can run both tools before making the approval decision, on the same chart data and route data as a draft route.

Boundary waypoints

Boundary Wpts inserts locked waypoints where the route crosses the ship's configured boundary distances (3 NM and 12 NM unless the ship's Boundaries page says otherwise — see Ship configuration). The 3 NM line is NOAA's Old Territorial Sea limit for US waters, measured from the legal baseline — the same line the charts show as the Three Nautical Mile Line. Where the baseline closes a bay or river mouth, the line follows the closing line, so inside it there is no 3 NM line and no 3 NM waypoint. The 12, 24, and 200 NM lines are NOAA's published maritime limits. The 1 NM distance, which is not a standard line, is measured from charted land — including islets charted as points. Outside US waters Plotroom has no 3, 12, 24, or 200 NM lines and places no waypoints for them. Each waypoint is named for the line it sits on: MARPOL 3 NM, MARPOL/Territorial 12 NM, Contiguous Zone 24 NM, EEZ 200 NM, and Boundary 1 NM for the one distance that is not a standard line. Waypoints already on a route keep the name they were given until the boundary waypoints are generated again. A route that leaves a boundary and comes back inside it gets a waypoint each way. These waypoints regenerate automatically as you edit and can't be hand-edited directly. A manual waypoint follows the cursor only while you hold the mouse button; releasing the button ends the drag immediately, including when you release beyond the chart edge. Moving the cursor or clicking elsewhere without holding the button does not move it again. After you drop a waypoint, its new position stays on the route line, XTE outline, arrows, labels, parallel indexes, and handles while the save finishes, including if you pan or zoom; a failed save restores the complete previous route. Once a route's boundary crossings have been established, an ordinary move reuses that unchanged chart reading and refreshes the nearby route stretch. Plotroom reads the chart again when the chart data changed or the move cannot safely use the established result. Boundary Wpts remains highlighted while automatic boundary waypoints are enabled, even when the route does not currently cross one. Press the highlighted button again to remove the generated waypoints and turn automatic regeneration off. Each generated waypoint also picks up a time zone from the leg it sits on — the offset of the waypoint before it on that leg, or the one after it when the first carries none — so its TZ cell shows a zone and its ETA prints in it right away, the same as any other waypoint; boundary waypoints on older routes are filled in the same way.

Reverse, undo/redo, and defaults

Reverse, offered on an editable draft from either the editor's Reverse button or the Library's right-click menu, opens the same in-app confirmation dialog before flipping waypoint order end to end; the schedule clears for a re-solve. Canceling leaves the route untouched.

Undo/redo runs from the nav-rail buttons or Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y, covering the last several plan edits from either the table or the map.

DEFAULT SPD sets the fallback speed used for any leg that has none of its own.

Waypoint time zones

Each waypoint carries its own time-zone offset, edited from the TZ column in the waypoint table: type the offset in hours, always signed (+8, -2, +5.5, +0), in steps of half an hour. A blank TZ cell means the offset is unknown; that waypoint's times fall back to the route's own display time zone, as before.

Click a TZ cell, then Shift-click another to select a range. Right-click the source cell and choose Apply to range, or type into a selected cell, to set those offsets together. Clearing a selected cell clears the range's offsets. Locked waypoints are skipped, and one Undo restores the previous offsets. The same menu offers Fill down, Fill up, Apply to selected for checked rows, and Apply to all.

A newly placed waypoint fills in its own TZ automatically: if the point sits under a real coastal or land time zone, that zone's current offset is used; over open water, where no such zone applies, the offset defaults to your own computer's time zone instead. Either way it's only a starting value — edit the cell to set a different offset for that waypoint, for example to match the zone the bridge intends to keep underway.

A waypoint's ETA and ETD cells display in that waypoint's own offset when one is set, instead of the route's display time zone; a waypoint with no TZ set keeps showing the route's zone as it always has. The route still carries its own overall time zone — the passage-plan sheet, workflow emails, and every waypoint without its own offset keep using it — but the editor header no longer offers a time-zone dropdown to set it directly; it is set from the route's own departure geography.

RTZ export writes each waypoint's ETA/ETD in that waypoint's own offset (for example 2026-09-08T10:00:00+08:00) when it has one set; a waypoint with no offset keeps exporting in the plain UTC (Z) form, unchanged. Importing an RTZ file reads the same signal back: an ETA/ETD carrying a numeric offset sets that waypoint's TZ. This includes Furuno RTZ schedules: explicit zero exports as +00:00, and fractional-hour offsets are retained.

Where the times themselves carry no offset — plain UTC (Z), or no schedule in the file at all — a Furuno file's own per-waypoint local time is read instead, so a plan that came off a Furuno bridge arrives with its TZ column filled in rather than blank. It is read for every waypoint that carries one, the first included, and it is the whole fixed offset from UTC: a waypoint marked -480 arrives as -8. A route that goes out to a Furuno ECDIS and comes back therefore keeps its zones. Only when neither signal is present is TZ left unset — a Wärtsilä or Transas file written wholly in Z times still imports with a blank TZ column, as before.

Overlays (user charts)

Draw and import non-route chart objects — survey outlines, mooring marks, danger areas, clearing lines — and exchange them with the ECDIS as user-chart XML.

An overlay object is one of five kinds: point, line, area, circle, or clearing line. Objects are grouped — a hand-drawn set, or everything pulled from one imported file. A group appears in the Library, can be filed into personal, ship, or fleet libraries, and can be linked to a route. The map draws overlay objects below routes and above depth shading, and they render whenever their group is visible, independent of whether you're actively editing a route.

A library can reference an overlay owned by another ship so the fleet can load, inspect, export, duplicate, or link it to a route. That shared reference does not make the source editable: only a planning officer on the overlay's owning ship can rename it, change or delete its objects, or delete the group. Administrators can edit ordinary groups across ships; built-in resource layers remain read-only.

Drawing and changing geometry

For a line or area, click to place each vertex. Press Enter or right-click after placing at least one vertex to finish; press Esc to cancel. Before the first vertex is placed, and while the overlay is simply open for editing, right-click continues to offer Pick chart features.

In Select mode, right-click a line or area vertex for Set coordinates… or Delete vertex. A line's first and last vertices also offer Extend line. Right-click an edge between vertices for Insert vertex, marked with its own icon like every other row; the new vertex lands on that edge. On an area, pressing directly on that same edge and dragging does the same thing without opening the menu — grabs a new vertex at the press point and places it where you drag to; pressing anywhere else inside the area drags the whole shape instead, so the edge and the interior are two different targets. A line has no edge-press shortcut: press anywhere on its body to drag the whole line, the same as always. A line also offers Add vertex by coordinate…. Its Paste tab accepts a list to append, while Set coordinates… accepts one position only because it changes a single vertex. A line keeps at least two vertices and an area keeps at least three.

Drawing objects

Arm a tool from the Draw card: Point, Line, Area, Circle, or Clearing. Line and area placement is click-to-add-vertex, Enter to finish, and Esc to cancel. Right-click opens the normal map menu, including Pick chart features, without changing the unfinished shape. A circle is click-center, drag-to-set-radius, click to place — or type a radius in the box that appears after the center click; a valid typed value previews live and Enter places the circle at that radius, overriding the drag. The radius runs from 0.1 to 1000 NM. Clearing draws a two-point line and commits it as a clearing line rather than a plain line — set its NMT/avoidance or NLT/evacuation type afterward in the properties dialog; the direction comes from how you draw the line, not a typed bearing. Circles can be placed on either side of the dateline, including after panning around the world. If saving an object fails, the error appears and its shape and name remain ready to retry; press Enter in the name field again, or Esc to cancel.

Finishing a line or area, or placing a point, label, or circle, opens a name box on the new shape, and the box stays open while you work the chart around it. Clicking or dragging the map pans and zooms as usual and adds no vertex and starts no new shape, the finished shape stays where you drew it, the box slides with the map so it keeps its place on the object, and typing resumes as soon as you let go — the box takes the cursor back for you. Enter places the object and Esc discards it; leaving the tool closes the box and drops the shape, as before.

Add by coordinate… types a position instead of clicking one: a latitude and longitude for a point or a line vertex, or a latitude, longitude, and radius in nautical miles to drop a whole circle in one shot. It's offered for points and lines while a tool is armed, and for setting an existing vertex's position from its right-click menu. The dialog opens in your profile's Coordinate format and its DD / DDM / DMS buttons switch it; the position you have typed carries across the switch, and the choice becomes your account's format everywhere else as well.

Every coordinate dialog also carries a Paste list tab reading the same freeform formats — see Pasting a coordinate list. While drawing or extending a line, it adds every recognized position as vertices in paste order, all in one step. For a single point, label, circle, or one vertex's new position, it accepts only one position at a time — pasting more than one is flagged and blocks Add/Set until you trim the list down to one.

The Point tool carries a style picker with six label styles. Only one style renders as text with no symbol; the rest place a glyph, and a freshly drawn point defaults to a filled circle so it always exports with a visible symbol.

Pasting a coordinate list

Wherever Plotroom takes a pasted list of positions — every coordinate dialog's Paste list tab, and the library's Import coordinates… button on the Overlays tab — it reads the same freeform format. Latitude comes first in each pair, and pairs are separated by new lines, commas, or semicolons:

Notations can be mixed line by line. Hemisphere letters (N, S, E, W, in either case) may replace or accompany a minus sign and win where the two disagree, and they identify which value is which even when longitude is written first. Text that isn't a coordinate — a pasted header line, for instance — is ignored. Anything unreadable is reported line by line under the box, naming the offending text: a position outside ±90° latitude or ±180° longitude, or a line whose values don't pair up. The count of recognized positions updates as you type, and only the recognized ones are added.

Object properties dialog

Right-click any object — freshly drawn or imported — and choose Properties… to open its editor. Every kind gets a color picker limited to the eight ECDIS user-chart colors (red, green, blue, magenta, orange, brown, black, yellow); the fields below that vary by kind:

Every kind also carries Danger (feeds the ECDIS chart-alert calculation) and Radar display checkboxes. Danger and Notes are mutually exclusive — checking Danger clears any Notes setting, and picking a Notes option clears Danger.

For a clearing line, changing Direction (°T) turns the line about its first point while retaining its length. Choose Save to update the chart and exported positions, or Cancel to leave it unchanged. Direction is not offered when editing several objects together.

Changing several objects at once

Select more than one object and choose Properties… to edit them together. The dialog then offers only the settings the whole selection can share: color, line width, fill density, line style, label style, Radar display, and the Danger and Notes flags. Per-object values — a label's text, a circle's radius, a line's range of notes — are left to the individual dialogs, so a batch edit never overwrites them. Width, density, line style and label style appear only while the selection is all of a kind that has them; Danger and Radar display are always offered.

A control whose objects do not already agree reads Mixed. Mixed means "left alone": on Apply that setting is not written, and each object keeps its own value. Choosing a value clears Mixed and applies it to every selected object. Danger and Notes stay mutually exclusive across the whole selection, including a selection that mixes lines with areas — turning Danger on clears Notes on every object in it.

Apply asks first, naming each setting that is about to change and how many objects it will change, so a bulk edit is never applied on a mis-click.

Names on map

Each overlay group has its own Names on map checkbox (off by default, on the group's detail card). Turn it on to draw every object's full name at its position — line names use a midpoint, including a straight two-point line, and point names sit beside the symbol — once, not doubled. A text-only label always shows its text regardless of the checkbox.

An area's name sits at the middle of the area when the middle lies inside it, and at the nearest point inside the area when it does not, so a horseshoe, a ring, or a long bent shape carries its name within itself rather than outside. When you pan or zoom until only part of the area is on screen, the name moves to the middle of the visible part once the map stops moving and stays readable; it returns to the middle of the whole area once the area fits again. While the map moves, names travel with it. Areas with very detailed outlines, such as survey sheet limits, place their names to the nearest pixel and pan as smoothly as simple ones.

Depth colors for survey soundings

A survey-soundings overlay (imported from a HYD93 file, see Importing and exporting) carries Depth colors on its detail card, which colors each depth figure by the depth it states. Choose a Style:

• Single color — every figure in the ordinary dark label color. This is where every soundings overlay starts.
• Ramp Stretch — a color ramp stretched between Min (m) and Max (m). It opens on Rainbow (blue deep, red shallow) across the survey's own shallowest and deepest soundings, which stay beside the boxes as (overlay) hints. Pick another ramp under Colors, type new limits, or select Reverse colors; a figure beyond either limit takes the color at that end.
• User Colors — your own continuous colors or discrete bands, built with Edit User Colors… in the same dialog depth rasters use, including its Saved ranges and saving a range for Only me or for your ship (see Depth colors and derived contours). It starts from the last User Colors you applied when those overlap the survey's depths, and otherwise from red at the shallowest sounding to blue at the deepest. A figure outside the range keeps the ordinary label color unless Below first or Above last sets one.

Every choice applies at once; typed limits apply a moment after you stop typing, or when you press Enter or leave the box. A strip under the controls shows the colors with the depth at each end. Every colored figure keeps the same white outline as an ordinary label, so only its color changes with depth. Figures that are not a number keep the ordinary label color. The colors are your own display choice: they change what you see, not the overlay itself, anyone else's view of it, or its ECDIS export. Your saved view keeps them per overlay, and a share link carries them to its recipient.

Editing

One person edits an overlay group at a time. While another session is editing it, the whole group is read-only — including its name, properties, individual objects, and delete actions — and the overlay card shows who is editing and when they last saved. Your own second browser tab is also blocked so it cannot create a competing undo history.

Other users can still view, export, duplicate, and link the overlay. Someone who has authority over both the item and a destination can also file it; an associated Scientist can copy a readable overlay but cannot re-file its source. Leaving the editor makes it available promptly, and Plotroom releases an edit that has gone quiet — after a spell without changes, or when the connection drops — with the same passing note naming the overlay, after which the group reloads as it was last saved; there is no force-takeover button. Deleting an overlay also waits if someone is editing a route linked to it. Try the deletion again after the route editor closes.

Drag a vertex handle to reshape a line, area, or circle. A line moves as a whole when you drag anywhere on its body that isn't a vertex handle; a clearing line shows a handle at its first vertex only, and dragging anywhere else on it — including over its other vertices — moves the whole line. An area works the same way from its interior, but its edge is a second, different target: press directly on the boundary line and a vertex is inserted there the moment you press — a plain click leaves it on the edge, and a drag carries it to wherever you release — instead of moving the shape. It is the same result as the edge's right-click Insert vertex, without opening the menu. Drag a point, label, or circle by its center. A press that does not move the pointer counts as a plain click everywhere except on an area's edge, so click-to-select and shift-click-to-toggle keep working; on the edge, hold Shift (or Ctrl, Alt or Meta) to select through it instead of inserting. While placing a line or area, Backspace removes the last vertex you dropped — repeatedly, back to the first, where it cancels the placement instead. Object edits join the same undo/redo stack as everything else on the map: Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Y (or Ctrl + Shift + Z) undo and redo the last ten object edits, whether that's an add, a move, a property change, or a delete. If Plotroom cannot save an object change — a name, its properties or its shape — an API error line in the Layers panel gives the reason (its ✕ dismisses it), and the object stays as it was saved.

Areas with holes. An imported area's holes draw open, with no fill or pattern inside and the outline drawn around each one, and a click or hover inside a hole does not pick the area. The area's name is placed on the area, never in a hole, and a multi-selection outlines the holes too. Holes are not edited on their own: vertex editing — dragging a vertex, pressing an edge, Set coordinates…, Delete vertex, Insert vertex — changes only the outer outline and leaves the holes where they are. Dragging the whole area moves its holes with it, and undoing that move brings them back. An outline edit that would leave a hole outside the outline, cut through or touch a hole, or make the outline cross itself is refused when you release: the outline returns to its saved shape, nothing is added to undo, and a notice at the bottom of the chart reads Outline not changed: every hole must stay inside the outline without touching it. or Outline not changed: the outline of an area with holes must not cross itself. While you drag, the chart shows the shape as you draw it; the check happens on release. An area whose holes already lie outside its outline stays editable, so it can be repaired. A copied area pastes with its holes.

With one or more objects selected while you're editing or drawing, Ctrl + C (Cmd + C on a Mac) copies the selection — every bit of styling comes with it: color, width, fill density, radius, label style and text, and the danger/radar/notes flags. Ctrl + V pastes into whichever overlay you're currently editing, centered on the mouse position when the pointer is over the chart, or offset slightly from the originals when it isn't. Paste a multi-object selection and the pasted copies keep their layout relative to each other, not just to the paste point. Copying from one overlay and pasting into a different one works too — the clipboard isn't tied to the group you copied from. Each pasted object is its own normal undo step. The same actions are reachable by right-click: Copy on a selected object's context menu, and Paste on the map's own right-click menu once the clipboard has something in it.

Importing and exporting

Import a user-chart .xml export straight off the ECDIS — one overlay group named from the file, its areas/lines/circles/labels mapped onto Plotroom's object kinds with color, width, density, and the danger/radar/notes flags intact. Multiple user-chart XML versions import cleanly. GPX imports too: waypoints become points, tracks and routes become lines. So do zipped shapefiles (.shp + .dbf, optionally .prj): one file is one group, polygons become areas, polylines become lines, points stay points, and the object names are pulled from the first name-like column in the attribute table. GeoJSON (.geojson/.json — a FeatureCollection, single Feature, or bare geometry) and KML (.kml, or zipped .kmz) import the same way: folders and multi-geometries flatten into the one group, polygons become areas, and simplestyle or KML colors snap to the nearest ECDIS color. A GeoPackage (.gpkg) imports its point, line and polygon layers the same way.

Polygons with holes. A shapefile, GeoJSON, KML/KMZ or GeoPackage polygon with islands inside it — a survey sheet around several islands, say — becomes one area whose islands are open holes, with every source vertex kept and no extra lines or pieces. An island inside a hole is an area of its own. A polygon whose holes touch or cross its outline, or overlap each other, is refused with Polygon with holes is invalid; repair it in the source GIS; repair it in your GIS and import again. An overlay whose holed polygons arrived as adjoining pieces keeps and exports those pieces as they are; import the original file again to replace them with single areas.

Survey soundings import from a NOAA/NCEI HYD93 sounding file (.a93 or .hyd93) — the fixed-width text NCEI publishes for its hydrographic survey archive. Every record becomes a point labelled with its depth in metres to one decimal (42.4), so a survey draws as its own field of soundings you can style, file, and export like any other overlay; a depth above the datum keeps its minus sign. The group is named for the survey identifier carried in the file, falling back to the file's own name, and records whose position or depth the file marks unknown are left out, with the count noted on the group. To color the figures by depth, see Depth colors for survey soundings.

Holes in exports. GeoJSON, KML, GeoPackage and shapefile downloads write an area's holes, so the file opens in a GIS and imports back into Plotroom as the same areas. GPX writes only the outline. Furuno user-chart XML and Wärtsilä AIZ cannot hold a hole: on download, each area with holes is split into adjoining areas with the same name and style — normally one more piece than it has holes — that together leave the holes empty. The overlay itself is not changed. The export review lists each such area under Imported polygon holes are preserved by adjoining areas; internal cut edges and repeated labels may appear, and you acknowledge it before the file downloads. A large overlay with many islands can take several seconds to prepare the first time. An area whose outline and holes do not form a valid shape is omitted with Polygon with holes is invalid; repair it in the source GIS, and one whose hole collapses at the AIZ file's precision with a polygon hole collapses at AIZ coordinate precision. AIZ export also removes repeated adjacent positions after rounding coordinates, and an area that collapses at the file's precision is listed as omitted for acknowledgement; the remaining objects can be exported. Load the file on the ECDIS and confirm the holes read as open water before relying on it.

Export always offers GPX, an ESRI shapefile ZIP, a GeoPackage, GeoJSON, and KML from the overlay's Selected card (or as ZIP variants when multiple overlays are selected). The GeoPackage is a single .gpkg file holding the points, lines, and areas layers together in WGS84, with the same attributes as the shapefile export — most GIS tools open it directly. GeoJSON and KML exports carry each object's name and color (simplestyle properties / KML styles), so geojson.io, Google Earth, and GIS tools render them the way Plotroom does; circles export as polygon rings. Depending on the ship's ECDIS-brand setting, overlays may also get an Export user chart XML button. When you export a route that has linked overlay groups, the export dialog offers the linked charts as pre-checked companions, so one click gets you the RTZ plus a matching .xml per group — whether or not the route is loaded on the map at the time.

If an imported user chart contains an object Plotroom cannot edit, such as a tidal mark, the object appears read-only in the list and is preserved when you export the chart again.

A user-chart XML export is named for the ECDIS: the chart name inside the file, and the downloaded file's own name, keep letters, digits, spaces, underscores, hyphens, and periods, and drop anything else — an em dash or a quotation mark in an overlay's Plotroom name never reaches the unit, and the file in your Downloads folder reads exactly as the chart will on the ECDIS screen. Object colours are likewise written only in values the unit is confirmed to render: a blue line drawn or imported in Plotroom arrives on the ECDIS drawn blue.

Sea-ice reference overlay

A fleet-wide, system-owned overlay group carries the Alaska Sea Ice Program's daily ice-chart analysis. It lives only under Resources — visible to everyone, with no owner to organize into a library — and refreshes automatically once a day, in the mid-afternoon Alaska time, after the day's analysis is published; a NAV-grade officer, CO, or admin can also trigger it on demand from the group's right-click menu ("Refresh sea ice"). If the day's NOAA source is unavailable, the refresh fails with an error and leaves the previous day's ice in place rather than clearing the layer. Its row's right-click menu carries that refresh, Copy link, and Duplicate overlay — nothing that renames, files, or deletes it. Because it can't be filed into a library directly, duplicate it from that menu to keep your own editable copy, which you then organize and edit like any overlay you made yourself.

Because the group's contents are replaced each day under the same name, its user-chart XML export names itself by the analysis date — Sea Ice_YYYYMMDD — as the chart name on the ECDIS and as the downloaded file. Two days' exports are therefore distinguishable on the unit, and a stale copy loaded last week is recognizable at a glance. A duplicate you made yourself keeps whatever name you gave it.

The concentration fill always draws on the map at its own colors and density, whatever Overlay presentation is set to for other layers — that control governs export and preview, not this layer's map display.

Only ice-bearing bands are shown — "Ice free" and "Unknown" are filtered out. Each band exports as one color/density combination:

Ice egg on hover and click

With the sea-ice layer's own row selected in the layers panel — the Resources system group or a duplicate you made yourself — hover any ice area to see the full WMO ice egg instead of a plain tooltip; selecting a different row, such as a route, turns the egg and click card off until the ice layer's row is selected again. The egg draws Ct (total concentration) at the top, Ca Cb Cc (partial concentrations) on the next row, Sa Sb Sc (stages of development) below them, and Fa Fb Fc (forms and floe sizes) on the bottom row, with So and Sd shown beside the oval when the source supplies them. The oval is drawn taller than wide and its cells use the standard MANICE egg-code notation rather than the two-digit storage codes: concentrations in tenths (3, 6-8, 9+, 10; under one tenth reads 0, as MANICE classes open water), stages as the single-digit codes with a dot for the thicker stages (1• medium first-year, 4• thick first-year, 7• old, 8• second-year, 9• multi-year, ▲ ice of land origin, X unknown), and forms as the floe-size digits (0 pancake through 7 giant floe, 8 fast ice, 9 icebergs). A field the source leaves blank or unused reads as an em dash, never as zero. One line under the egg gives the plain-English summary — the concentration in tenths with its MANICE term (for example 4-6/10 · open drift; the map label itself shows only the tenths) in Concentration display, or the RIO and category in POLARIS RIO display (below).

Click the same area to open the full decode card, a wider popup sized for its rows and the RIO table: every raw code's plain-text meaning, the ASIP region, and the analysis date in the same prominent, ageing-aware style used for staleness elsewhere in Plotroom — a reminder that ASIP publishes one analyzed snapshot a day, not a live shipboard picture. In POLARIS RIO display the card adds the vessel the assessment is for — its name, ice class and the RIV table in use — then the terms that built the RIO (each ice type's tenths, its risk value, and whether a related stage stood in for one the table doesn't carry exactly), the open-water remainder, any notes, and a recommended speed limit when the risk level calls for one.

POLARIS RIO display

The sea-ice layer card offers a Display choice: Concentration (today's stored colors, unchanged) or POLARIS RIO, which recolors the ice by operational-risk category for a chosen vessel under the IMO POLARIS method. RIO display never changes a stored object's color, density, or export file — it is a read-only lens over the same ice.

The vessel is the active route's own vessel when a route is active. Otherwise, a single-ship account uses its assigned or associated vessel. The Vessel dropdown appears only when your account has access to more than one ship, and offers those ships. Your choice overrides your account's default vessel. While an active route supplies the vessel, the dropdown stays disabled with Set by the active route. Single-ship accounts never see the dropdown, regardless of route status. The card always names the vessel and its POLARIS ice class. A vessel with no class configured shows every polygon as Unavailable with a link to that vessel's Ship configuration Ice tab.

Saving an ice class or mission breakpoint refreshes the loaded RIO assessment and open ice details without a reload. While assessing, the map shows concentration colours, not the previous risk colours. Choosing Not set removes RIO export availability and shows Unavailable when the assessment returns.

Choose the Ice table the calculation uses — Standard or Decayed. The Decayed table carries its own caveat text on the card: use it only when ice decay has been confirmed by qualified onboard observation, per the IMO guidance. The Display, table, and vessel choice all ride your saved views and share links, so reopening a saved view returns you to the same reading.

Mission operations restricted sits between Normal operation and the IMO risk categories: a RIO below your vessel's mission breakpoint (set on the Ship configuration Ice tab, default 25) but still at or above zero. Ice of land origin is never scored against the RIO scale — POLARIS doesn't apply to it, and the card says so, pointing to standard glacial-ice avoidance and stand-off practice instead.

Export ▾ on an ice-derived overlay's Selected card, or the multi-overlay ZIP when every selected overlay is ice-derived, offers each ECDIS format twice — concentration colours or POLARIS RIO colours — with the quick Export button following whatever the layer card currently shows. The RIO rows use the layer card's vessel and table and are disabled, with an explanatory title, when no vessel with a configured class is available to export against.

Planned Surveys (OCS) layer

NOAA Office of Coast Survey's planned hydrographic survey projects draw as polygon outlines from NOAA's Planned Survey Areas service. Load it from the library's Resources → Web Layers tab. It is a reference layer, not an editable or exportable overlay. Loading it shows current and future projects on the chart. It then appears under Resources in the layers panel and behaves like any other layer — a checkbox shows or hides it, and its right-click menu offers Zoom to layer and Unload layer. Its library row carries the same Zoom to layer: right-click it once the layer is loaded to fit the chart to the planned survey areas. Before it is loaded there is no roster to fit to, so the row's menu has nothing in it and the right-click falls through. Hovering a project polygon shows its name; clicking one opens a popup with its calendar year, assigned ship, locality, area, and project number.

The roster is fetched once, when you load the layer, and the project outlines are simplified for chart-browse use so the transfer stays small enough for a shipboard link. If the service can't be reached, Plotroom retries once and then reports "Network error — check your connection and try again", leaving the chart exactly as it was before you loaded — the layer is not left half-loaded. Try again when the connection is back.

Selecting the layer's card in the layers panel adds a Year filter (the current year onward, or an All option) and a Ship filter, narrowing which project polygons are drawn on the chart, plus a Zoom to layer button that fits the chart to what's shown.

Planned Surveys (OCS) is a separate live NOAA vector service, not an editable overlay or configurable vector Web Layer. Its project names remain available through hover and click; Survey Progress (OCS FY26) is a separate reference raster, so it has no polygon-label placement control.

Coast Guard notices to mariners

The Coast Guard LNM notices layer draws the Coast Guard's Local Notice to Mariners content straight from the Navigation Center's public services: hazards to navigation, regulated and restricted areas, marine construction, bridge work, marine events, naval activity, safety bulletins, and aid-to-navigation changes, discrepancies and temporary changes, as points, lines and areas coloured by category. Load it from the library's Resources tab; it then appears under Resources in the layers panel with the usual checkbox and right-click Zoom to layer and Unload layer. It is a reference layer for planning, drawn beneath your routes and overlays; it is not editable or exportable.

Selecting its card shows the categories as checkboxes with counts (the safety notices and temporary aid changes are on to start; bridges, miscellaneous notices, aid change proposals, aid discrepancies and corrected items are off until you tick them), a District filter by Coast Guard district name, and Include expired for notices that ended in the last 30 days. The card's date line says when the notices were last fetched and the newest notice date; the layer refreshes itself twice a day while loaded.

With the card selected, hovering a notice shows its title, category, district and waterway, and closes as soon as the pointer moves off the notice, you click, or the map moves. Clicking one opens its details: effective and end dates with their year in your clock and UTC, the Broadcast Notice number and Light List number where present, and the full notice text. Beneath the text a smaller block lists when the notice was created and corrected, and its status when that is anything other than approved. Two kinds of link follow: Notice record, the Coast Guard's own record of that notice, and the district's weekly Local Notice to Mariners. At wide zooms nearby notices gather into counted clusters; click a cluster to zoom into it.

If a refresh fails, the notices you already had stay on the chart and the card says refresh failed with the time of the last good update; if some of the eight notice sets did not load, the card says coverage is incomplete. A layer that will not load at all is removed rather than left half-loaded; untick and re-tick it to try again. Plotroom never treats an empty or stale layer as an all-clear, and notices the Coast Guard publishes without a usable position are not drawn. Plotroom is a planning aid: verify against the official notices and the vessel's certified ECDIS.

Rasters

Upload your own imagery or bathymetry, and browse the fleet's shared reference rasters — survey progress, gridded bathymetry, and sea-ice concentration.

The library's Raster tab lists the custom rasters you can read. Library visibility and ordinary item permissions govern sharing, just as they do for other library items. Files can run large — up to 2GB of survey coverage or imagery.

Uploading a custom raster

Use Import Raster in the library footer, or drop a .tif/.tiff, .jp2, regular .bag, or S-102 .h5/.hdf5 file onto the library panel. You can pick or drop several files at once, and add more while others are uploading. Drop S-102 exchange .zip files onto the Raster tab. Supported S-102 files use edition 2.2.0 or 3.0.0. Variable-resolution BAG, encrypted products and incremental updates are refused; export a supported complete grid or obtain the complete dataset. A missing CRS must be assigned in a GIS before upload. Plotroom renders ordinary rasters as follows:

A depth surface can contain valid depths but no reported uncertainty, including S-102 edition 3.0 files that omit uncertainty entirely. Plotroom keeps its published-depth colors and contours available and disables Depth minus reported uncertainty when no valid uncertainty values are supplied. An unknown value is never treated as zero.

A BAG (Bathymetric Attributed Grid) import carries an Elevation and an Uncertainty layer in one raster; a layer selector on its detail card switches which one is drawn, and the click-to-query popup reads the value from whichever layer is currently selected. Regular BAG grids have no cell-count limit; the upload-size limit still applies. Variable-resolution BAGs are rejected; export a regular grid that preserves the survey detail before importing.

Each file gets a row in a list above the raster table, and the files upload one at a time in the order you added them:

• A file waiting its turn reads Queued; Cancel removes it before it starts.
• The file uploading shows a progress bar and its percentage; Cancel stops it and the next file starts.
• A file that fails keeps its row with the reason, and Dismiss clears the row. A failed or cancelled file never holds up the files behind it.

Large files go up in pieces. If the connection drops or the service stops answering for a minute, Plotroom retries the piece on its own, waiting a little longer each time. If the connection remains down after five tries, the row reads Connection dropped at 42%. Resume to continue. (with the share that had arrived) and offers Resume. Once the connection is back, select Resume: the upload carries on from where it stopped, not from the start, and Resumed from 42% shows briefly in its row. Resume works only while this page stays open; after a reload, import the file again and delete the leftover row from the table. While a file is in the upload list, leave its row in the table alone, even if that row reads error: deleting it stops the upload. The list stays while you close and reopen the Library.

Once a file has arrived, its row leaves the list and the raster appears in the table as processing. Small files are usually ready quickly; large survey coverages can take several minutes. Over-limit uploads are rejected. A corrupt file, or one without usable georeferencing, shows error with an explanation; delete the row to the Recycle Bin and correct or re-export the source before trying again.

Reference raster layers (Resources)

The library's Resources node — above your own libraries, never renamable or droppable — carries NOAA's own reference rasters alongside the Tracks tab and the sea-ice overlay. These are built-in reference layers rather than uploads: they cannot be renamed, filed into a library, deleted, or exported. Their rows offer the load checkbox and the opacity and display controls below, and nothing else — right-clicking one has no Plotroom menu to show.

Another reference layer, Bathy Gap Analysis, flags water NOAA considers overdue for a modern survey; it can render blank when NOAA's own service is down.

Display controls

Select a raster in Layers to open its detail card. Opacity ranges from 10–100% and is remembered in your saved view. Right-click a custom raster and choose Zoom to layer to fit its bounds. RGB and indexed images retain their supplied colors. Reference layers use their own display controls and legends; Survey Progress opens in the service's published colors, with a Color ramp select offering those service colors alongside a Min/ Max stretch in four alternate ramps — under the service colors the Min/Max boxes and gradient bar are hidden, since there's no stretch to set. Above the coverage, it draws the relief surfaces the OCS story map draws over it, in the story map's own renderers — hillshaded colour relief for the FY26 DSM surfaces everywhere outside the Great Lakes, and colour-ramped depth for the Great Lakes relief service, running from pale-yellow shallows through neon green and teal to dark-blue deeps — following the coverage's own toggle and opacity and moving with it in the layer order. Clicking reports "Depth … m" where a relief exists, and the coverage's own sounding elsewhere. Its card also names the newest survey the coverage service holds, in a Latest survey line; the service, not Plotroom, decides when a new one appears there.

Depth colors and derived contours

In a numerical raster's card, under Display options, a multiband raster first shows a Layer select naming its bands. Then choose a Style:

• Ramp Stretch — set Min and Max (each shows that band's own imported range, to one decimal place, beside it as a hint), choose a stock color ramp, and optionally select Reverse colors. The default rainbow has blue at the deep end and red at the shallow end. This style and User Colors draw from the layer's web display grid, so very large surveys (there is no size limit on GeoTIFF or BAG imports) draw quickly at every zoom; Chart style depth shades and the contour styles read every native cell and ask you to zoom in on such a grid.
• User Colors — choose Edit User Colors… to build Continuous color stops or Discrete bands in a separate dialog. Switching to User Colors on a raster that hasn't had its own colors set starts from the last user-set range you applied anywhere, when its span covers this layer's range; a fresh range built from this layer's own values otherwise. The preview follows your edits. Below first and Above last specify colors or transparency outside the range; this is distinct from missing data. Choose Use colors to return the range to the layer card.
• Chart style depth shades — available for S-102 only. Uses the colors, two-/four-shade or unsafe-water setting, and shallow, safety and deep values from Chart display. The safety contour and applicable tints are included automatically. The contour uses the exact configured number, not the next charted ENC contour.
• Safety contour only — available for S-102 only. Draws no fill at all: just the same derived safety-depth line, in red, on top of every other layer including the chart.
• Manual contour — available for S-102 only. Draws no fill, just one red contour line on top of every other layer including the chart, same as Safety contour only, but the depth comes from a Contour depth (m) number box in the card instead of the Chart display safety depth. It applies as you type, a moment after you stop. The first time you switch a raster to Manual contour the box starts at the current Chart display safety depth; after that it remembers what you set when you switch styles and back.

Every control applies as soon as you change it — selects and checkboxes immediately, Min/Max and any slider a moment after you stop typing or dragging. There is no separate apply or reset step; editing Min past Max (or the reverse) simply clamps to keep the range valid. Whenever Min/Max is filled from the layer's range, it uses one decimal place, including integer values such as 21.0; very narrow ranges keep enough precision to distinguish their ends. The small (layer) hints use the same precision and always describe the source range. Values you enter are remembered separately for each band, retaining their precision when you switch bands or styles, reopen the card, or reload. Press Enter or leave the field to commit an edit immediately. Depth values are in metres; generic rasters use their source units. Reversing colors does not change the sign or meaning of the source values. Opacity is the same map raster-opacity paint every raster uses, so it fades the whole layer, including a red Safety contour only line, exactly like any other raster.

A Sign of depths select (Positive down or Negative down) sits below the style controls for every numerical GeoTIFF or BAG raster, depth profile or generic profile alike — it negates that raster's value band under either profile, and a paired uncertainty band ignores it. S-102 cards never show this control: S-102 is a defined positive-down format, so there's nothing to negate. Where it does show, only a source manager can change it — anyone else sees it disabled. Changing it applies immediately and re-seeds the stored portrayal's range to the new sign, without clearing the portrayal itself: a stock ramp keeps its ramp identity and Reverse colors choice, and user colors are mirrored into the new sign — for example, Negative down applied to a stretch stored as Min -65 / Max -21 shows Min 21 / Max 65. The choice sticks across reloads and saved views like any other control, with no prompt to reload before it applies. A new GeoTIFF import detects positive-up automatically when most of its sampled values are negative; older imports pick up the same detection the next time their details are read.

To reuse User Colors, enter a name, choose Available to and select Save named range. Only me keeps it private. A ship's NAV, OPS, XO or CO can share a range with that ship. Saved ranges lists every range you can see, whichever raster it was saved from; a range saved in a different unit shows that unit beside its name. Select an entry and choose Load range to edit or use a copy. Saving is optional; applying colors without a name still retains the layer's display in your saved view. Removing a named range does not change layers already using it. Each private or ship collection allows up to 100 named ranges.

S-102 and regular BAG supply depth information from the source; older converted rasters without retained originals require reimport for source-faithful depth inspection. Custom GeoTIFF depth layers offer only Ramp Stretch and User Colors.

Choosing Chart style depth shades, Safety contour only, or Manual contour applies immediately — there's no confirmation step and no flash of the previous style while it switches. Instead, whenever one of those three styles is selected, the card shows one line of red text: No datum or tide correction applied. This performs no datum conversion, tidal correction or clearance calculation, and it's the only place this note appears; it isn't repeated elsewhere on the card.

Numerical rasters stack like any other raster layer — a raster lower in your layer order shows through any gap, hole or unknown cell in one above it. Use Bring to front or Send to back to change which one is on top where they overlap. Unknown and outside-coverage cells are always fully transparent. During updates or failures the previous tiles stay on screen rather than disappearing; correct a displayed settings error, retry, or zoom closer if the grid is too detailed for the view.

Click the map with a numerical raster selected for a one-line popup: the sampled value in the layer's own sign convention, such as "23.4 m — H14379_MB_4m" for a depth layer, a generic value with its declared units, or "No data — {layer}" outside its coverage. The value is read from the survey data at the clicked cell, not from the colors on screen — for a BAG, from the Elevation or Uncertainty layer selected on its card — so wherever the layer draws, the popup has a value to report. This answers under every style, including Chart style depth shades and the contour styles, and past the antimeridian the same as anywhere else. If the popup reads Source sample unavailable, the display was mid-update or the value could not be read: let the tiles settle and click again, and if it persists where the layer draws, send feedback naming the layer and the position. The card and the map always render through the source's current version, so nothing more is shown and there's no reload prompt to act on. Import newer files as new items and compare them before switching. Route Finder and Weather View hide bathymetry and restore its settings when closed. Verify all planning results on the vessel's certified ECDIS against official, corrected charts.

Import NOAA S-102 bathymetry

In the library's Raster tab choose Import NOAA S-102…. A temporary catalog browser opens on the main map, with dataset outlines and an import card. In current map view starts switched on, so the picker opens scoped to what's on screen; turn it off to browse elsewhere. The map outlines show every S-102 dataset in view and update right after a pan or zoom, whatever the search box or region filters are set to — an extent you've already visited redraws instantly. Choose a Region and Port or area, or search by place name or dataset identifier to narrow the Published datasets list below; the list is still filtered and paged, and search covers all available results. Click an outline or choose a list result. If datasets overlap, choose one from the displayed list — the choice opens immediately with each dataset's name, area, grid resolution and issue date already shown. Zoom to dataset frames its extent, including while background chart tiles are loading. Select a supported dataset, then choose Import selected dataset — it's available as soon as a supported dataset is selected. The import goes into the displayed library destination. Repeating the same version in that destination reuses your existing import. Browsing outlines does not download depth files. Cancel or Escape returns to the Library and restores the previous map position and panels. Leaving through another main-view button also removes the outlines.

Inspect the selected dataset's geographic extent, approximate grid resolution, issue date and dataset edition. Extents can include gaps and do not mean the whole area was surveyed. A dataset without supplied bounds is excluded by the map-view filter but can be found by name or region. All matching, located datasets are outlined, including results beyond the first list page. Load more datasets shows further matches. The catalog itself refreshes once a day, so there's no manual refresh control — reopening the picker later, or narrowing the search, always reflects at most a day-old listing; file upload always remains available. When more than one dataset covers the same spot, the list shows each one's grid resolution and issue date so you can tell them apart and pick the finest or newest.

If datasets cannot load, check your connection and reopen the picker. If Load more datasets fails, previously loaded results stay visible; use it again after the connection recovers. A failed import keeps your selection so you can try Import selected dataset again. You can also download the source separately and use Import Raster.

Voyage log

Everything awaiting approval, and the full record of what's already approved, in one panel.

The voyage log is visible to NAV, OPS, XO, and CO officers and to admins — a Watch Officer doesn't get the rail icon for it. Its button sits in the icon rail directly below Route Finder and above Weather. It opens as a full-panel takeover with two lists: Pending approval (routes submitted and awaiting a decision, newest first, with who submitted them and when) and the Approved log (one row per approval event). Both lists share a Ship column naming which ship the route belongs to — but only for admins: a CO or NAV-grade officer only ever sees their own ship's log, so the column would be redundant and is hidden for everyone else.

The Approved log's columns are Approved (when the decision was made), ETD, ETA, Route Name, Ship (admins only, as above), and Approved by, plus a "direct" badge on routes a CO approved in one step and a status note like "archived" if the route has moved on since. Click the Approved, ETD, or ETA header to sort the log by it; click the same header again to reverse the order. Route Name is sortable the same way. The log opens sorted by ETD, earliest departure first, and rows with no value for the current sort column always sort to the bottom regardless of direction. If a route is unlocked, edited, and re-approved, only its latest approval appears in the log — the superseded entry doesn't linger alongside it.

Row actions

Click a row in either list to select it, then use the toolbar above the lists — it acts on whichever row is selected:

History opens (or closes, on a second click) a panel docked below the two lists, listing every workflow event on the selected route — submit, approve, reject, retract, unlock, ETD change — each with the acting officer's name and rank (when they've set one), the time in your local time zone, and any comment they left. Switching the selected row updates the panel to match.

Unlock asks for confirmation and takes an optional comment; once confirmed, the route drops back to Draft, leaves the approved log, the action is recorded in the route's history, and the original submitter is notified by email.

Legs and date filtering

A leg is a named voyage segment with a start and end date, managed in the left-hand column by the ship's NAV-grade officers (NAV/OPS/XO/CO) or an admin — create, rename, redate, or delete. Deleting asks you to confirm and names the leg. A year picker above the leg list shows only years that actually have legs and defaults to the current year; switching it filters both the leg list and the leg choices in the Dates dropdown.

The Dates dropdown filters both lists at once: All dates, Previous month (a rolling one-month window ending today — not the previous calendar month), any defined leg, or a Custom range you set with the two date fields. Clicking a leg in the sidebar fills the range from its dates directly (its end date is included); an approval landing exactly on that end date still counts. The log opens on the leg you are in: when today falls inside one of the ship's legs, that leg is selected — highlighted in the sidebar, its dates in the two date fields, and the year picker on its year — so the lists open filtered to the voyage under way. Where legs overlap, the one that started most recently wins. When no leg covers today the log opens on All dates, with the year picker starting on whichever year contains today (when it has any legs) — pick a leg from the Dates dropdown or the sidebar to filter to it. Either way, a choice you make while the panel is open stays as you left it.

The log defaults to your own ship. Admins get a ship dropdown, including an "All ships" option; everyone else is locked to their own ship's log. Every timestamp in the panel — submitted, approved, leg dates — displays in your local 24-hour clock.

Passage plans & MOVREP

The formatted paperwork a route produces: a passage-plan sheet for the bridge, and a departure MOVREP for the Radio Room.

Passage plan sheet and PDF

Every route can produce a printable passage-plan sheet and, when the PDF button is available, a PDF with the same contents. Open either from a route's Selected card or from the voyage log toolbar: the sheet opens in its own browser tab, while the Library card's PDF saves the PDF as a download (the voyage log's PDF button opens it in a tab). It carries:

• An overview block: vessel / author (the owning ship plus whoever prepared it — an RTZ-imported route keeps its own author string; an in-app route shows the officer who submitted it), total distance, waypoint count, default speed, ETD/ETA, and underway time.
• A small route-overview picture on a NOAA ENC nautical-chart background, placed right after the overview block — it falls back to a street-map background if the chart service is unavailable; the sheet still renders if no picture can be generated at all.
• The full waypoint table: name, position, turn radius, stop/dwell time, course, leg distance, planned speed (flagged if it's outside the leg's speed limits), the predicted current when the route has a current result (below), leg time, ETA, cross-track distance, rhumb-line/great-circle, navigation regime, and notes — with distance and time totals in the footer row. A leg's time comes from the solved schedule when there is one, or is computed from the leg's distance and speed otherwise.
• A regime guidance block, when any navigation regime on the route has guidance text attached to it (bands without guidance text are simply omitted, and the whole block disappears if none apply).
• Prepared-by and approved-by signature lines, with the officer's rank when they've set one in their profile (for example, "LCDR J. Doe (CO) · 2026-07-19 14:30") — a route a CO approved directly, in one step, is marked "(direct entry)".

Long leg notes and long waypoint names wrap onto extra lines inside their own columns instead of stretching the table off the page: the row simply grows taller, and the times, distances, and ETAs beside a wrapped note sit at the top of that row so they still read as that leg's. The printed sheet and the PDF break the text exactly where the on-screen sheet does.

Times print in the route's own time zone, not a bare UTC default: the zone you set explicitly in the route editor, or — if you never set one — the real time zone of the route's departure position. When the waypoints carry their own time zone offsets (the TZ column in the route editor), the sheet's clock is the first waypoint's offset, named in the header, and every ETA prints in its own waypoint's offset; a TZ column appears beside the ETAs only when those offsets differ along the route.

When the route has a Currents result for its saved departure, the table adds a Current column after the planned speed: the predicted current at the middle of the leg leaving that waypoint, as its set and drift and where it came from — for example 045° / 1.8 kt (Model) for the ocean-current forecast, or Sta. and the station's name for a prediction station. The set is the direction the current flows toward, in degrees true; a dash means no current data for that leg. A line under the table credits the sources used. The column only reports: the planned speeds, times and ETAs beside it are unchanged, and a route without a current result, or edited since, prints no Current column.

MOVREP generator

A departure MOVREP (Movement Report) is the message a NOAA ship files before leaving a port or a survey working ground. The MOVREP button on a route's Selected card opens the composer. Plotroom checks that the route is assigned to a ship, has at least two waypoints, and has solved departure and arrival times before enabling Generate. If route details cannot be loaded, choose Retry. Check a MOVREP remains available while details load and when the route is not ready for generation.

The message follows the NOAA/Navy operational-reports SOP format: a precedence + date-time-group envelope line, the originating ship, AIG 55 as the mandatory action addressee, an INFO block, and the RRR MOVREP body — ETD, waypoints, an optional MOD LOC for survey working grounds, ETA, and remarks. Every numeric group (date-time, speed, latitude, longitude) carries a trailing checksum digit that the generator computes for you.

Most of the message fills itself in from the route: ETD/ETA place and time and speed of advance come from the solved schedule, and ship name and call sign from the ship record. The composer leaves you a few choices:

Generate produces the message in an editable preview — hand-edit it directly if needed, then Copy it to the clipboard or Download it as a .txt file for the email to the Marine Center Radio Room.

Checking a pasted MOVREP

The composer's Check tab lints a MOVREP you paste in — one received over the radio, drafted by hand, or produced by another system — rather than one Plotroom generated itself. Paste the message text and click Validate.

The check re-derives and compares the trailing check digit on every date-time, position, and speed group in the message, and separately checks the message's overall structure (the envelope line, the AIG 55 addressee, and the expected RRR body sections). Findings are listed by line number against the pasted text, so a mismatched digit or a missing section can be traced straight back to where it occurs in the message.

Roles

Five duty roles govern what you can see and do aboard a ship, two science-party roles cover people who plan alongside several ships, and an UNASSIGNED state holds an approved member with no duty role yet. Plotroom shows only the actions available to your role.

Scientist and Chief Scientist are alternatives to the vessel roles, not additions to them: everyone holds exactly one role, so nobody is a Scientist and a NAV at the same time. Science personnel have no primary vessel — instead a fleet administrator gives them one or more associated ships, and those associations are what open the ships' libraries to them and make them eligible for those ships' Shared libraries. Someone applying for an account can ask for a science role while their signup is pending; the administrator decides the role and picks the ships (see Science personnel and associated ships).

Roles are set in two places. A CO manages their own crew from the Crew view (open it from the Personnel person icon in the side rail) — every non-admin crew member gets a role select spanning WATCH/NAV/OPS/XO/CO. A CO can't touch their own role, can't promote anyone to admin, and can't move a crew member to a different ship. A Watch Officer can request promotion to NAV from their profile; the request shows up as a banner in the CO's Crew view to grant or decline.

An admin sets any user's role — including ADMIN itself — and their ship assignment from Fleet > Personnel, and approves pending signups from the same screen.

The approval workflow

A route moves through a small set of states on its way to becoming the plan of record, and every move is written to its history.

1. Draft. Editable by any planner on the owning ship (WATCH/NAV/OPS/XO/CO), one editor at a time.
2. Submit for approval. Any planner submits — from the route editor's card, or from the Library's selected-route bar, which no longer asks you to load the route first: select the Draft row and Submit for approval is ready to use, and clicking it opens the same dialog for that route. A Fleet template keeps a greyed explanation that it has no approval workflow, and a route somebody else is editing keeps its greyed "Being edited by…" button. Submitted and Approved routes have no submit entry. The CO reviews routes from the ship's libraries, so a route the CO can't see can't be submitted on its own: when the draft is unfiled, or filed only in a personal library, the submit dialog asks for the destination ship library and files the route there as part of submitting. Until a destination is chosen, Submit stays unavailable and the dialog says why — an unfiled route is invisible to the CO. It's also how a Watch Officer, who can't otherwise move a route into a ship library, hands one off to the CO. The ship's Commanding Officer(s) get an email with the route's overview. A CO looking at one of their own ship's Drafts is the approver rather than the submitter, so that same selected-route card offers them Approve directly in place of Submit for approval — see Unlock and direct approval below.
3. Submitted. Locked for further editing by the submitter, though the CO can still adjust it while reviewing — waypoints the CO touches or adds are flagged purple on the map with a CO chip in the table, so the change is visible even if the CO rejects. The officer who submitted it, and only that officer, can retract it back to Draft if it needs more work before the CO decides.
4. Approve or reject. A Submitted route of the CO's own ship carries Approve… and Reject… beside its status chip in the Library's selected-route bar as well as on the route editor's card, again without loading it. The CO reviews and either approves — with an optional multiline comment — which runs and records a final feasible schedule solve when the route has schedule intent, then locks the route as Approved, records it in the voyage log, and signs the passage sheet/PDF with the CO's name and rank; or rejects, with a comment describing what to revise, which returns the route to Draft. The submitter is emailed either way.

A status chip tracks a route wherever it's shown — its library row, its selected card.

Unlock and direct approval

An Approved route isn't quite frozen forever. Its ship's CO, or an admin, can unlock it back to Draft from the voyage log toolbar, with an optional comment — the unlock is recorded in the route's history, the original submitter is emailed, and the route drops out of the voyage log until it's resubmitted and re-approved.

Going the other direction, a CO can approve directly: a one-step action on a Draft route — offered on the route editor's card, and on the Library's selected-route bar in place of Submit for approval, whether or not the route is loaded — for a passage that was actually run on the ECDIS and is only now being entered into Plotroom for the record. It records both a submission and an approval in the CO's own name in a single confirmation. The history shows the pair back to back, the submission entry marked "(direct)", and the passage sheet's signature line adds "(direct entry)" so it's clear the route wasn't reviewed leg-by-leg beforehand.

Route history

Every transition — submit, approve, reject, retract, unlock — adds an entry to the route's history: the action, the acting officer's name, role, and rank when they've set one, a timestamp in your local time zone, and their comment if they left one. History is append-only; nothing is ever edited out of the record. Open it from the voyage log's History button, which shows it in a detail panel at the bottom of the panel for whichever route row you have selected.

Emails

Plotroom sends notifications for route workflow actions and account requests. An email problem does not cancel the action in Plotroom.

Route emails summarize the route, ship, acting officer, total distance, ETD, ETA, and any comment, and include a link to open the route. Times use the route's time zone. No emailed link grants access or decides anything by itself: it requires the recipient to sign in, and an Approve or Deny button only opens the request for the signed-in officer to confirm.

Replying to any of these emails reaches the person whose action sent it, not the unmonitored sending address: a CO replying to a submission notice reaches the submitter, a submitter replying to a rejection reaches the reviewing CO, an officer replying to a library add request reaches the requester, and an administrator replying to a signup request reaches the applicant.

CO guide

What a Commanding Officer does in Plotroom beyond planning: review and approve routes, run the ship's voyage log, set crew roles, own ship configuration, and curate fleet libraries.

Everything here sits on top of the planning tools every officer uses. If you haven't read Interface and the workflow section of Workflow & Roles yet, start there — this guide assumes you already know how to build and edit a route.

Reviewing a submission

A Watch Officer, NAV, OPS, or XO plans a route and submits it for your approval. You do not have to go looking for it.

1. Get the email. As soon as a route on your ship is submitted, every CO of that ship gets an email (subject: Route "<name>" submitted for approval) with a facts table, a route overview picture, and a Review the route button. That button is a deep link — it opens Plotroom, signs you in if needed, loads the route, activates it, and centers and zooms the chart to it, all in one click.
2. Run Route Check. Before deciding, check the route against the chart: the Route Check panel flags shallow water, land crossings, and danger objects per leg, and lists the charted areas the route runs through, with an overall PASS / WARNINGS / FAIL / INCOMPLETE status — WARNINGS meaning charted areas alone, with nothing breaching the safety contour. Click an alert to jump the map to that leg. Review edit also keeps Auto Regimes available, so you can update the route's classification before deciding.
3. Edit if needed. You can open a submitted route in Review edit and adjust it yourself before deciding — waypoints you touch are flagged (a small "N CO edits" badge appears on the route card) so the submitter can see what changed.
4. Approve or reject. Both live on the route's selected card, and on the Library's selected-route bar for any Submitted route of your ship — you can decide from the Library list without opening the route. Approve… and Reject… open a multi-line comment box (optional on approve, worth using on reject so the submitter knows what to fix); Esc closes it without deciding. Confirming an approval records a final feasible schedule solve when the route has schedule intent, then locks the passage plan; a rejection returns the route to Draft.
5. The submitter is notified. Approving or rejecting emails the officer who submitted the route — the reject email carries your comment.

The Voyage log's Pending approval list is the same queue, newest submission first, if you'd rather work from there than wait on email.

Approve directly

Not every route on the ship started in Plotroom. When a route was actually planned and executed on the ECDIS and you're bringing it into Plotroom afterward for the record, there's no one to submit it to you — you're recording history, not reviewing a plan.

Approve directly does both steps in one action. Wherever it applies — the route editor's card, the layers panel's active-route card, and the Library's selected-route card — it takes the place of Submit for approval: submitting a route to yourself has no meaning, so your card offers the one action that is the shorter path to the same end state — nobody is waiting on your submission. Either one opens the same confirmation. Confirming it records a submission and an approval, both in your name, in a single transaction that cannot be undone. The route's History then shows the paired submit (marked "direct") and approve entries, and the passage sheet's prepared-by line reads "(direct entry)" so it's obvious later how the route reached Approved status. Approve directly re-solves the route's schedule as its final check; if that solve can't be completed — an ETA anchor that can't be met, for instance — the confirmation stays open and shows the reason instead of closing as though nothing happened. Fix the schedule and try again.

Unlocking an approved route

Approved routes are locked to editing. If you find a mistake afterward — or the plan needs to change before departure — Unlock brings it back to Draft so it can be edited and resubmitted (or approved directly again).

Select the route in the Voyage log's Approved list and use the Unlock button in the toolbar above it. You'll be asked to confirm, with an optional comment; the route leaves the approved log, the unlock is written into its History with your comment, and — unless you're unlocking your own submission — the original submitter is emailed that it happened.

Approving a route freezes a snapshot of your ship's safety configuration (contour depths, draft, regime bands) into it; later edits to Ship Config don't affect a plan that's already Approved. Unlocking clears that frozen snapshot — a resubmit or a fresh direct approval re-evaluates the route against whatever your ship's config says at that moment.

Voyage log — your ship's record

The Voyage log (its own rail icon, visible to NAV/OPS/XO/CO/admin) is two things at once: a working approval queue and the ship's permanent record of what was approved, when, and by whom.

• Pending approval — every submitted route awaiting a decision, newest first.
• Approved log — every approval event: date, route, ship, and approver, with a "direct" badge on direct entries and a status note (e.g. "archived") if the route has moved on since. Select a row to use the toolbar: Map, Sheet, PDF, History, and Unlock.

Legs are how you organize the log into meaningful stretches — a season, a survey project, a transit — rather than one long undifferentiated list. In the left column, create a leg with a name and a start/end date; the end date can't be before the start. Clicking a leg fills the Dates filter with its window (the leg's own end date is included) and filters both lists to it. A year picker above the leg list keeps years from piling up in one view — it defaults to the current year, or the newest year that has legs.

The Dates dropdown also offers All dates, a fixed leg, a custom range, or Previous month — a rolling one-month window ending today, not the prior calendar month.

Managing crew roles

Open Crew from the Personnel person icon in the rail. It lists your own ship's roster — nobody else's — and lets you set any crew member's role, including promoting another officer to CO alongside you or demoting one. Your own row and any admin's row are locked (shown as a badge, not a dropdown): you can't change your own role, and admin accounts are managed only from the fleet-admin side.

A Watch Officer can request the NAV role themselves from their Profile. The request shows up here as an amber banner — Grant NAV or Decline — until you act on it or they cancel it. Vessel assignment itself stays with fleet admin; you can change roles on your crew, but not which ship they're on.

A member an admin approved with a ship but no duty role shows up here as UNASSIGNED, next to the same role select — they can sign in and view your ship's data but can't plan anything until you (or an admin) pick a real role for them, the same way you'd change anyone else's.

The list sorts and filters the way the fleet roster does, on your own ship's people. The NAME, ROLE and LAST ACTIVE headings sort — select one to sort by it, select it again to reverse — and it opens by name. ROLE and LAST ACTIVE also carry a small ▾ that drops that column's list (one role, or any time / last day / last week / last month) with an All entry to clear it, and the Find crew… box above the table matches name and email. The three combine, a heading whose filter is narrowing the list is marked, and when nothing matches the table says so. A pending NAV request stays above the table, unaffected by either.

Removing someone from the vessel

Remove from vessel…, at the right of a crew member's row, deletes that person's Plotroom account — it is the same confirmation an administrator gets in Fleet management, opened on your own crew, and it reads out what the deletion touches before it will run. You reach it for your ship's company only: your own row has no button (use Delete my account… in your profile), and an admin account is managed from the fleet-admin side. Another CO alongside you can be removed.

Their personal routes and layers come to you, in a new personal library named for them, unless you choose to delete that work instead; anything they filed on a ship, fleet or shared library stays where it is. Their account becomes a closed record rather than disappearing, so their comments, approvals and route history keep their name. The confirmation will not run until you type the person's email address, and Plotroom checks it before deleting anything.

Ship configuration

Ship Config is the one panel that defines how the solver, the safety checks, and the passage sheet behave for your vessel. It's editable by your ship's CO or NAV-grade officers (NAV, OPS, XO), or an admin — read-only for your own Watch Officers. Science personnel inherit an owning ship's settings through the route and do not open this panel.

For a vessel entering Plotroom for the first time, use Initial Ship Setup as the commissioning checklist.

Fleet libraries

A fleet library is a shared template collection any ship can read and copy from — a route filed there has no approval workflow at all, because it isn't a plan in progress, it's a reference. Only a CO or an admin can create or curate one; NAV-grade officers get no exception.

To build one: "+ New library…" in the library tree, choose the Fleet scope (only CO and admin see that option). To share a route, overlay, custom raster, or web layer into it, add it like any other library — you need authority over the item as well as the library, so what you publish there is your own ship's material or your own uploads; another vessel's item stays readable but is not yours to file or move. Other ships see it under the Fleet section of the tree and can pull Copy to my ship… on any route there — that makes a fresh Draft on their own ship, evaluated against their own ship's config, never yours. Copy to my ship… is a route mechanic: an overlay, raster, or web layer in a fleet library is read and loaded where it sits.

Science guide

What a Scientist or Chief Scientist does in Plotroom: draft your own routes and chart material against the ships you work with, hand a route to a vessel for adoption, and — as a Chief Scientist — run a Shared library for a project.

The planning tools themselves are the same ones the ship's officers use. If you haven't read Interface and Route editor yet, start there; this guide covers what is different about planning as science party.

Getting started as a Scientist

Your account is tied to one or more associated ships rather than to a vessel you serve on. That association is what you see when you open the Library:

• Your own libraries. Personal libraries you create, holding the routes, overlays, custom rasters, and web layers you make. They are yours alone — no officer, Chief Scientist, or administrator can see inside them.
• A branch per associated ship. Each vessel you're associated with appears as its own branch, and you read its ship libraries: the routes it has planned, its overlays, its rasters. Reading is all it is — you can't file into a ship library or change what's there.
• Shared libraries you've been given access to, under the SHARED band, grouped by vessel, each row showing whether you hold READ or WRITE there.

Using ship settings. You do not open Ship configuration. A route uses the settings of the ship that owns it; your personal route has no owning ship until adoption and its ship-dependent results say when Plotroom is using shipless defaults. For your own chart contours, symbols, boundaries, and other portrayal choices, use Chart display. Those choices affect your chart without changing a vessel's settings.

Drafting. Create or import a route the ordinary way — + New route… in the library footer, or drag an RTZ or GPX file in — and edit it in the route editor exactly as an officer would. The same goes for overlays, uploaded rasters, and web layers. Everything you create is a personal draft: it belongs to no ship, and it stays private to you whether you file it in one of your personal libraries (where nobody else sees it at all) or leave it unfiled (where administrators alone also can).

Making your own copy. A readable route or overlay offers Duplicate even when another person or an associated ship owns the original. The original is untouched. Your copy appears under Unorganized, belongs to no ship, and is yours to edit or file. Custom rasters and web layers do not have a Duplicate action.

Ship-dependent checks wait for a ship. A draft with no vessel has no safety contour, draft, or regime bands to be measured against, so ROUTE CHECK and AUTO REGIMES fall back to Plotroom's defaults and say so on the panel. The check that matters is the one the ship runs against its own configuration once the route is adopted.

Exporting. Your drafts export like any other route — RTZ, GPX, the passage sheet and PDF, and userchart XML for overlays — so you can take material to a meeting or to another system before any ship is involved. As always, a Plotroom export is a planning aid: verify it on a certified ECDIS against corrected charts before it is used for navigation.

Submitting a route to a ship

When a draft is ready for a vessel to take on, hand it over rather than filing it: a science route reaches a ship only through consideration.

1. Pick the ship library. Right-click your draft and choose Submit for consideration to <library>…. The destinations are the ship libraries of the vessels you're associated with. Only a draft you created yourself can be submitted: a route with no recorded author, or one that already belongs to a ship, shows the entry greyed with the reason. Submitting is one step, with nothing further to fill in, so name the draft for what it is before you send it — that name is what the officers deciding see.
2. One ship at a time. While the request is open, the other destinations tell you the draft is already under consideration, and name the library that holds the open request. Nothing stops you editing the draft meanwhile; the reviewers are shown when it last changed and are warned if it changed after you submitted it.
3. Wait for the decision. The ship's NAV and CO are emailed, and its NAV, OPS, XO, and CO (or an administrator) can decide from the pending row in the library. You're emailed either way.
4. Adopted. Approval moves the route out of your personal libraries and onto the ship, files it in the library that was asked for, and records Adopted in the route's history with your name kept as its creator. You still see the route — it's in a ship library you read — but it is the ship's now, and further changes are theirs to make. If you want to keep working on your version, duplicate the draft before you submit it.
5. Denied. Nothing changes. The draft stays in your personal library, still private and still editable, and you can submit it again — to the same ship or another one.

Chief Scientist: creating a Shared library and managing access

As a Chief Scientist you can create a Shared library on any vessel you're associated with — a workspace for a project or a leg, open to the people you name rather than to the whole ship or the whole fleet.

1. Create it. Use "+ New library…" in the library tree and choose the shared scope; when you're associated with more than one ship, pick the vessel beside it. The name has to be unused among that vessel's Shared libraries.
2. Name the members. Right-click the new library and choose Manage access…. Everyone eligible for that vessel is listed — its crew and the science personnel associated with it — with Read only for people who need to see and export the material and Write for those building it. Each choice saves as you make it and is recorded; — takes access away again. The vessel's CO, OPS and XO, its associated Chief Scientists, and fleet administrators aren't listed: they administer the library by role.
3. Fill it. Anyone with Write files references into the library and creates their own overlays, rasters, and web layers in it. The standard destination menus show a Shared category when a writable Shared library is available. Filing something there never hands over edit control — the item's existing ownership and role rules continue to apply. Science personnel can re-file another creator's readable reference only within a Shared library where they have Write access, and their own routes still go to a ship through consideration, never by being filed in a Shared library.
4. Keep it current. Access follows people. When someone's role, vessel, or ship associations change, the access that depended on that association is removed with the change — so when a leg ends, the roster changes with it rather than lingering.

Admin guide

Fleet-level administration: who gets into the system, what ships exist, how libraries are tiered, and the reference layers everyone sees on the chart.

Most of what runs a single ship — crew roles, ship configuration, route approval — belongs to that ship's CO. See When to use admin vs. leaving it to COs at the end of this guide for the boundary.

Approving signup requests

New accounts remain Pending and cannot see fleet data until an administrator approves them.

1. Open the request. Use Review & approve in the notification email, or open Fleet > Personnel from the Personnel person icon in the rail. The email link still requires you to sign in.
2. Review the assignment. Each pending sign-in shows as a banner: email, the requested vessel and role when they were given, an Assign vessel… dropdown pre-selected to that vessel when it names an existing fleet ship, and an Assign role… dropdown (Unassigned / Watch Officer / NAV / OPS / XO / CO / Admin) pre-selected to the requested role. Both are yours to change — what the requester asked for is a suggestion, not a setting.
3. New vessel? Add it first. If the ship they asked for isn't in the fleet yet, use + Add vessel in the Fleet Vessels table below, then come back and pick it from the Assign vessel dropdown.
4. Approve. Once both a vessel and a role are picked, Approve activates. Picking Unassigned as the role approves the account into the fleet with a ship but no duty role — useful when you want someone in the system and visible to their CO before deciding what they'll do; the ship's CO (or you) can assign the real role afterward from the crew panel. Approve admits the user and sends an email confirming access. The ✕ button denies the request instead. A denied pending request is removed.

Fleet management

Fleet > Personnel is one view for both people and ships. It opens full-window over the chart, the way the Library does — close it with ✕ or Esc to return to the map. The roster table lists every approved user — name, email, vessel, role, last active — with a role dropdown that can promote or demote anyone on the fleet, CO's included (admin accounts show "Fleet HQ — no vessel" and aren't reassignable from here). A member approved with a vessel but no duty role carries an UNASSIGNED badge next to their name here until someone picks a real role for them.

The roster opens by vessel. The NAME, VESSEL, ROLE and LAST ACTIVE headings sort the list — select one to sort by it, select it again to reverse — with name as the tiebreak, role in seniority order rather than alphabetically, and people with no vessel or no recorded activity at the bottom either way. Three of those headings filter as well: VESSEL, ROLE and LAST ACTIVE each carry a small ▾ beside their sort control, and pressing it drops that column's list — one ship, one role, or one activity window (any time, last day, last week, last month) — with an All entry at the top to clear it. A heading whose filter is narrowing the roster is marked, so a filter that is on is visible without opening its menu. The three combine with each other and with the search box above the table, which matches name and email, and when nothing matches the table says so. Pending sign-in requests are listed separately and are not affected by the sorting or the filters.

The Fleet Vessels table below it is where a ship's identity lives:

+ Add vessel creates a bare ship by name; click Edit on its row to open full Ship Config and fill in draft, contours, regimes, and the rest — or leave that to the ship's own CO once they're assigned.

Delete, beside Edit on the same row, removes a vessel from the fleet — and only an administrator has it. Because a vessel takes its own history with it, Plotroom first shows you what the deletion touches: how many crew, science associations, routes, overlays, custom rasters, web layers and ship libraries hang off the vessel, and how much of its own record — voyage legs, track points, last position, regime bands, configuration history — goes with it. Counts include anything already in the Recycle Bin. The Delete button stays disabled until you type the vessel's name; case and surrounding spaces don't matter, but the spelling does. Plotroom checks the typed name before continuing, so a mistyped name deletes nothing. Esc or Cancel leaves the vessel exactly as it was.

When the deletion runs:

• Crew revert to no vessel. Everyone assigned to the ship stays in the fleet and keeps their role — they simply have no vessel, the way an account approved without one does, and are read-only until you assign them a new ship from the roster above. Science accounts associated with the vessel lose that association and keep their science role.
• Their work is kept, but belongs to no vessel. Routes, overlays, custom rasters and web layers of the deleted ship all survive — nothing is deleted and nothing is sent to the Recycle Bin, and anything already in the bin stays there on its usual seven-day clock. Items filed in a library are still reached through that library; a route or overlay that was never filed anywhere becomes private to the person who created it. (Unless you ask for the vessel's own work to go too — see Also delete this vessel's routes and layers below.)
• Its ship libraries become fleet-wide. A ship library of the deleted vessel keeps its name and contents and moves to the Fleet shelf, where everyone in the fleet can read it. The confirmation identifies this access change. (Ticking the box below deletes those shelves with the vessel instead of widening them.) A Shared library is never widened and never deleted: it keeps its access list but no longer has a ship behind it, so only an administrator can open it until you move it to another vessel.
• The vessel's own record is deleted outright. Track points and last reported position, voyage legs, navigation regime bands and the ship-configuration change history cannot exist without a ship, so they go when it does — they are not recoverable from the Recycle Bin.

Also delete this vessel's routes and layers

The confirmation carries one checkbox, and it starts clear. Leave it alone and the deletion does exactly what is described above — nothing of the crew's work is deleted. Tick it when the vessel's work is not needed — for example, a duplicate or mistaken vessel entry — and the deletion also sends that vessel's routes, overlays, custom rasters and web layers to the Recycle Bin. The impact counts split in two the moment you tick it, one line for what would be deleted and one for what would be kept, so both sides are on screen before you type the name.

Only the items nothing else holds are deleted. Anything filed on a library that outlives the vessel is kept, exactly as it is when the box is clear — a Fleet library, a Shared library, anyone's personal library, another vessel's ship library, and this vessel's own Fleet and Shared shelves, which survive it. An overlay drawn on a route that survives is held by that route and is kept as well. What the tick does delete is the vessel's own ship libraries, so filing something there alone does not save it; an item never filed anywhere has nothing to save it either. Four kinds of item are never deleted this way whatever the box says — an approved route (the plan of record), a system-managed layer, an upload still converting, and anything already in the Recycle Bin. Those lose their vessel and stay as they are.

The vessel's ship libraries go with it instead of becoming fleet-wide. The shelves themselves, not everything filed on them: an item that another surviving library also holds keeps that home and simply loses this one. A library has no Recycle Bin of its own, so a shelf deleted this way does not come back.

Delete account

Delete account… sits at the right of every roster row and removes a person from the fleet. Your own row does not offer it — use Delete my account… in your profile, which confirms by email — and the fleet's last administrator cannot be deleted by anyone: promote another administrator first. A pending sign-in request is not an account yet and is still turned away with its own ✕.

As with a vessel, Plotroom reads the live impact before you decide, and the Delete account button stays disabled until you type the person's email address — case and surrounding spaces don't matter, the spelling does, and the server checks it before anything is written. What the dialog says will happen is what happens:

• The account is closed, not erased. They can no longer sign in and they leave the roster, the crew lists and every library's member list, while their comments, approvals, route history and feedback stay exactly where they are, credited to the closed account. Nothing in the record loses its author.
• Their personal work moves or goes. Choose Keep their personal work and their personal libraries and the routes, overlays, custom rasters and web layers filed only there — plus anything they never filed at all — move to the receiving account, in a new personal library named <name> (former crew). The receiver is the ship's own CO, or you yourself when you are the CO running it from Crew. Choose Delete their personal work and those items are deleted for good — not the Recycle Bin, because with the account closed nobody would be left who could restore them.
• What they filed on a shared shelf stays. A route or layer on a ship, fleet or Shared library keeps its place on that shelf either way, credited to the closed account.
• A short tail goes either way. Their saved views and weather routing runs are deleted whichever option you pick — nobody else can open them — and so are their science associations and the library access they held.

A science account belongs to no vessel, so it has no CO to inherit and only the delete option is offered; the same is true of a ship account whose vessel currently has no CO, and the dialog says which of the two it is. A CO reaches this action for their own ship's company only and never for an administrator.

Library retiering

Right-click any library and choose Change type… to move it between the four types without touching its contents (see Library tiers and who can organize them). This is no longer admin-only — COs, NAV/OPS/XO officers, and library owners each reach the part of the matrix their own authority covers — but as an admin you reach all of it, on any ship's libraries, and the dialog greys nothing for you except the rules that hold for everyone: a Shared library can't be retiered at all, only a Ship library can become Shared, and a library with sub-libraries has to be emptied of them first.

Becoming a Ship or Shared library needs an owning vessel. A library that has none takes the vessel of the officer changing it, so a fleet library created by a shipless account (an admin with no vessel) still has nothing to narrow to and refuses with a "library has no ship" message. If you want a ship-scoped version of that content, either have an officer of the target ship make the change or create a new library on that ship instead.

Voyage log across ships

Where a CO's Voyage log is locked to their own vessel, yours carries a Ship dropdown with an All ships option — switch it to review any ship's pending queue, approved history, and legs. It's the same Map/Sheet/PDF/History toolbar either way, and you can Unlock an approved route on any ship, the same authority a CO has on their own.

System layers

Several kinds of reference data are available without anyone uploading them:

• Sea ice. The ASIP ice-edge overlay, under Resources, refreshes automatically once a day. Any NAV-grade officer, CO, or admin can force an immediate refresh from the layer's right-click menu when they need the latest edge sooner; a failed refresh (a NOAA-side outage) leaves the previous chart in place rather than blanking the layer. The overlay can't be deleted by anyone, admin included.
• Coast Guard LNM notices. The Coast Guard's Local Notice to Mariners content, live from the Navigation Center, coloured by category; see Coast Guard notices to mariners.
• Planned Surveys (OCS). NOAA Office of Coast Survey's planned hydrographic survey projects, shown from NOAA's Planned Survey Areas service. Load the layer from the library's Resources → Web Layers tab; it then appears under Resources in the layers panel, and its Year and Ship filters live on the layer's card, not in an admin screen.
• Reference rasters. Survey Progress (OCS), NCEI Bathymetry (BAG), Bathy Gap Analysis, BlueTopo bathymetry, and the JAXA AMSR3 global sea-ice concentration raster are built into the app against fixed NOAA/partner data sources — there's no admin screen for adding or configuring one. Treat their data as preliminary reference, same as everything else in Plotroom: not for navigation.

Custom uploaded rasters (GeoTIFFs) are different — anyone can upload one and it's visible fleet-wide immediately. As admin (a librarian, same as NAV/CO) you can rename or delete anyone's upload, not just your own.

ENC chart status and refreshes

Plotroom refreshes its NOAA ENC chart each week — Saturdays at 1:00 AM Alaska time. Administrators can open ENC chart service from the icon rail to check the date and condition of the chart currently available to users, start a refresh by hand, and control whether finished refreshes are published to production.

The summary shows the last published build, the next scheduled refresh, chart and region counts, and whether any source charts are missing. Times are shown in your local time zone.

The table opens worst-first, so anything needing attention is at the top. Select a column heading to sort, select it again to reverse the order, and a third time to return to the opening order.

Select a region to see Last NOAA check, Last built, and any missing charts. An unchanged check preserves the last build date; From cache counts charts reused during that published build, not during the latest check. A failed conversion should be reported for investigation. NOAA zip unavailable means NOAA is not currently providing that source file and normally requires no action. A chart omitted because more detailed coverage replaces it is not a failure.

Refresh updates the displayed status. It does not start a new chart refresh — that is what Rebuild now is for.

Auto-deploy to prod after each rebuild decides what happens after a successful refresh. When it is on, the refreshed chart is published to live users automatically. When it is off, the chart waits for Promote to prod. The line beneath the switch shows the time and result of the latest publication. Leave automatic publication off while a chart refresh needs review.

After checking a completed refresh, select Promote to prod, then Confirm promote, to publish it to live users. Publication takes a few minutes; select Refresh to see the result. Promotion is unavailable while a refresh is running or automatic publication is on.

Weekly build regions lists every chart region Plotroom knows, with a checkbox controlling whether it is part of the weekly refresh. An unchecked region remains available until the next refresh finishes, then leaves the chart. A read-only list shows the regions included in the latest refresh but cannot be changed here.

Rebuild now starts the same chart refresh the weekly schedule runs, immediately. Selecting it once arms the button; select Confirm rebuild to start. A full refresh takes an hour or more and incurs processing cost. A second refresh cannot start while one is running. Select Split national join across three machines (this rebuild only) only when the chart maintainer recommends it; it changes how this refresh is divided, not the finished chart. While a refresh is in progress the button reads Build running and shows its start time. Publication follows the automatic-publication setting above.

Build fleet appears above the figures while a refresh is running and for a day afterward. Its cards show progress, restarts, and completed regions. National join shows the overall chart assembly and publication stage. Select Refresh to update the panel.

A check beside a region means that region's chart was completed; the whole machine can still report FAILED if a later part of its work did not finish. If every listed region is checked but a machine reports FAILED, report the build before using Rebuild now. The completed regional work may be reusable without running those conversions again.

User management

Beyond the approval queue, the roster table is where you handle changes to people already in the system: move someone to a different ship, change their role, or step in if a ship has no CO at all yet.

Deleting a user only works while they're still Pending. Once approved, an account can't be deleted outright. Change its role instead if access needs to be reduced.

One boundary holds regardless of role: a personal library is visible and writable only by the user who created it. Not even an admin can see inside another user's personal library.

Science personnel and associated ships

Scientist and Chief Scientist sit in the same role dropdown as the vessel roles, in the roster and in the approval banner for a pending signup — someone can ask for one when they sign up, but only you can grant it. Picking a science role changes the row beside it: the single-vessel dropdown becomes a multi-ship associated ships picker, because science personnel hold no primary vessel. Tick every ship the person plans with. The associations are what let them read those ships' libraries, submit routes to them for consideration, and be given access to their Shared libraries. Granting a science role with no ships is allowed — the account simply sees only its own material until you add one.

Moving someone the other way, into a vessel role, drops every association at once and gives them a single vessel again — and it needs that vessel: when you pick a vessel role for a science account, the row holds the new role while its vessel cell asks you to Assign vessel…; nothing is saved (and a test identity cannot be assumed) until you choose one, and Escape or re-selecting the science role cancels.

When to use admin vs. leaving it to COs

Day-to-day authority over a ship sits with that ship's CO: crew roles, ship configuration, route decisions, and the ECDIS setting. Fleet administrators normally do not need to handle those tasks.

What stays admin-only: approving new sign-ins and assigning a first vessel, adding vessels to the fleet roster, changing the type of a library on any ship (officers can only do it where they already have authority), promoting or demoting a CO or another admin, and reviewing any ship's voyage log.

One thing admin explicitly cannot do is approve, reject, or directly approve a route on any ship — that authority belongs solely to the ship's own CO. Admin can unlock an approved route on any ship if it needs to come back out for edits, but the approval decision itself is never admin's to make.

Keyboard & mouse reference

Every shortcut and pointer gesture in Plotroom, in one table.

FAQ / troubleshooting

Answers to the questions that come up most on the bridge.

Data fails to load

When loading a list or other app data encounters a brief service failure, Plotroom retries once after a short pause. If an error remains, check your connection and try the action again. A failed save is not automatically resubmitted: check the displayed result before saving again.

Why can't I edit this route?

Editing is only offered when the route's status and your role and ship line up:

• The route is Draft and you're a planning-role user (Watch Officer, NAV, OPS, XO, or CO) on the route's own ship.
• The route is Submitted and you're that ship's CO making a review edit ahead of a decision.

Once a route is Approved it's locked — the ship's CO or an admin has to Unlock it back to Draft before anyone can edit it again. A route filed in a Fleet library is a shared template with no approval workflow of its own: only a CO or admin can edit it directly, while any approved reader can make an unfiled duplicate; vessel planners can also use "Copy to my ship…" to choose a ship-library destination as part of the copy. And a route belonging to a different ship is never editable, no matter your role, unless you're an admin.

I exported a userchart, but no symbols show up on the ECDIS

A point set to the text-only Label style shows no marker. Open the point's Properties dialog and pick a symbol style — Point, Circle, Triangle, Diamond, or Pin — then re-export the userchart XML.

Which userchart XML versions does Plotroom support?

Plotroom imports the userchart XML versions the fleet's ECDIS actually produces, and always exports its own current version.

My raster upload fails, or stays "processing"

A few things to check:

• Size. Uploads above the fleet's configured limit (2GB by default) are rejected.
• Format. Plotroom accepts 8-bit grayscale and RGB JPEG2000 (.jp2) images with optional transparency and embedded georeferencing; separate world files are not imported. It also accepts georeferenced GeoTIFFs: color imagery, single-band files with an embedded color table, and plain single-band grids. Across the supported image and survey formats, dateline-crossing and polar rasters retain their original resolution; crossing the dateline alone does not require splitting the raster. A corrupt file, or one without embedded georeferencing, shows error; delete it to the Recycle Bin and re-export the source with georeferencing included.
• "Processing" can take several minutes. Large survey coverages take longer than small files. If the row changes to error, read the message, delete the row to the Recycle Bin, and correct or re-export the source before trying again. A raster stuck uploading or processing doesn't have to be waited out: Delete works on it directly, cancelling the stuck attempt and sending it to the Recycle Bin like any other delete.
• Connection. A large upload rides out short dropouts on its own. If its row reads Connection dropped at …%. Resume to continue., check your connection, then select Resume to carry on from where it stopped. Resume needs the page to stay open: after a reload, import the file again and delete the leftover row. A row reading Upload session expired — import the file again. cannot be resumed; import the file again. Cancel or Dismiss leaves the table's row for that file reading uploading, and later error; delete it to the Recycle Bin.

Parts of the chart are blank grey squares

A grey square usually means part of the chart or a reference layer did not load. Wait briefly; Plotroom retries temporary failures. If the squares remain:

• Check the connection, then pan away and back to ask for the area again.
• Switch the layer off and on from the layers panel, which requests it from scratch.
• A layer whose name is red, or whose row reads Upstream unavailable · retrying in … min, is paused because its service keeps failing; see Layers panel for what the pause does and how to retry at once.
• A permanently blank area at high zoom may simply be beyond that layer's coverage rather than a failure — try another basemap, or zoom out.

Never plan through a gap in the imagery on the assumption it is empty water. Verify coverage on the vessel's certified ECDIS against official, corrected charts.

I don't see the voyage log

The voyage log is visible to NAV, OPS, XO, and CO, and to admins. Watch Officers don't get the rail icon for it — it's a review/approval surface, not a planning one.

A share link asks me to sign in

A copied link opens its route only after you sign in; it does not grant access. If your account is not approved, or you cannot normally see the route's ship or library, the route will not open. Ask the sender to confirm that you have access to the route.

Plotroom sent me back to the sign-in screen

If your sign-in expires or Google sign-in does not complete, Plotroom returns to the sign-in screen with a short explanation. Sign in again to continue. Saved work is retained; an entry you were typing but had not saved may be lost.

An email never arrived

Check spam or junk first. Account approval emails are sent only after an administrator approves the request. Route workflow emails are sent when the route changes status — for example, when it is submitted or approved — not whenever it is saved.

The times look wrong

Passage-plan sheets print in the route's own time zone. If a route's time zone was never explicitly set, the sheet falls back to the real time zone of the route's departure position. If a sheet still looks off, set the route's time zone from the editor. Separately, times throughout the app (editor ETAs, the voyage log, ship positions) display in 24-hour HHMM format in whatever time zone applies — that's the normal display, not a bug.

What does "Previous month" mean in the voyage log?

It's a rolling one-month window ending today — for example, selected on 19 Jul it fills the dates 19 Jun through 19 Jul — not the previous calendar month.

Glossary

Terms used throughout Plotroom and this documentation.