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.

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 make, 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 Route in the Browse | Route | Draw switch, 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; Furuno vessels also offer user-chart XML exports. 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 settings gear. 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 had open when you opened the dialog — the voyage log, the Library panel, the Route Finder, the Layers panel, Chart display, the route editor, or Draw mode each set their own, general otherwise — and you're free to change it before sending. The category stays tied to that surface while you pass through Help. 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, drag the form 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 along the bottom edge of the chart 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. The readout disappears when the pointer leaves the map.

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, Topographic, and Satellite basemaps, plus an ENC chart checkbox. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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

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.

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 provides a minimal, uncluttered chart view.
• 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.

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.

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.

Mode pill, themes, and dimming

The Browse | Route | Draw pill above the map card is always fully visible to planning roles, even with nothing loaded. Browse is the default read/explore mode; Route enters the route editor for the active route (or prompts you to create one if none is loaded); Draw does the same for overlay objects. Escape 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 in Browse mode for a context menu: create a new divider, VRM, or EBL (see Bridge tools below), or — near an active route's waypoint — add a comment. While editing a route, right-click still reaches the divider, VRM, and EBL without leaving edit mode, and offers "Add waypoint here." On the active route's line it offers "Insert waypoint here" instead, splitting 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. An existing bridge tool's marker responds to right-click with its own set/delete options — plus Copy coordinates… — instead.

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.

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.

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

Copy link on a route creates a link that opens the route, replaces the other loaded routes, makes it active, and fits the chart to it. Overlay links likewise replace the loaded overlays and fit the named overlay. Other kinds of layer from the starting view stay in place. 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 or overlay.

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.

VRM and EBL

Right-click the chart and choose New VRM or New EBL; 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, 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.

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). The Routes section also carries an All routes / In map view filter above the list, and 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.

Find box and search

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. Clicking a search result clears the search and loads that layer onto the map. A ROUTE result goes one step further: it loads, becomes the active route, and the chart fits to it — exactly what the Library's Zoom to route does — so clicking the route you just searched for takes you to it. Every other kind of result still loads without moving the chart or changing what is selected.

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. 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. 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. 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), 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 Route mode pill edits, the one comments and Route Check attach to, and the one submit and approval act on. 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 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.

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. 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 with their name and when each was last updated, and a marker on whichever one is active. 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 and loads its layers and camera; 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, and the blank view starts saving as you work; 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).

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. 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, 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.

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. Underway vessels render as heading-rotated arrows; moored or anchored vessels render as plain circles 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); an underway vessel's popup adds speed and course over ground, left out entirely for a vessel at anchor or moored since neither applies to a stationary ship.

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.

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 downloads the selected ship's (or ships') track points inside the current Display range as one GeoJSON file. It needs no planning role, and re-importing that file with Import track restores the same segments with each point's exact recorded time.
• 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 greys the actions with the reason, and 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.

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.

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, an ECDIS-brand setting, and a change history. Every member of the fleet can view it; editing is limited to an administrator or the ship's own CO or NAV-grade officers (NAV, OPS, XO).

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

Which vessels the panel offers depends on who you are. Ship's company see their own vessel. A science account sees the ships it is associated with, choosing between them from the selector at the top and reading every tab — including regime bands and the change history — without being able to change anything. An account with no vessel and no association is told so instead of being shown a configuration.

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.

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), 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.

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 Plotroom keeps the complete item for exactly 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 when their seven-day period ends. 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.

A fleet library also carries 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 the vessel's CO, 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 three — the ship's CO, its associated Chief Scientists, and fleet administrators — administer every Shared library on that vessel, by role rather than by an entry in a list. Names must be unique among that vessel's Shared libraries; Personal, Ship, and Fleet names are unaffected.

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. Because a route or overlay lives under one tier at a time, a destination of another tier used to be a dead end. It now offers a copy: 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. Same-tier destinations still file the original with no prompt, and Move to library ▸ still 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 and has no copy step, so a different-tier destination stays greyed there. 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.

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, 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.

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, GPX, and Shapefile, overlays offer GPX, Shapefile, GeoPackage, GeoJSON, and KML, plus a Furuno user-chart XML option on ships set to that ECDIS brand (all as ZIP archives once more than one item is selected). 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.

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):

A shapefile is a set of sidecar files — select the .shp together with its .shx/.dbf/.prj in the same file picker and they import as one overlay. 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.

The preview gives every row a status. A row Plotroom cannot read no longer blocks 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.

Rasters in the library

Custom raster uploads (GeoTIFFs 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 shows each row's type (RGB, Single band, Indexed, or Multi-band for a BAG read one band at a time) 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 (no type yet) always sorts last. While the file transfers, its progress stays above the raster list. 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. 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 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. If Plotroom cannot use the address, it reports that no supported web map service was found.

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. 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 carries a Copy link button. Anyone with access who opens the 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 button works differently — since background imagery has no extent of its own to open on, it copies a view link instead, carrying the current map camera plus that one raster. Neither button appears on system references everyone already has, like the ASIP sea-ice overlay and the Resources reference rasters (BlueTopo, NCEI Bathymetry, and the rest), or on any layer you didn't file yourself.

Rename opens an inline text field on the row. 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, has no library memberships, and appears under Unorganized — private to them until they file it somewhere; the source is unchanged. 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. As a non-librarian duplicating a ship route, you're prompted afterward to file the unfiled 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.

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

Open it from the Route pill in the mode switcher, or by double-clicking a route on the map or in the Library. It docks along the bottom of the chart and can be collapsed to a thin strip with the grip control, or closed entirely.

Selecting a route that isn't editable — an Approved route, for instance — and pressing the Route pill opens the same route information table read-only: every field is visible, but none of them can be edited.

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 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. 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).

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. Those derived values aren't sticky — the moment you change any solve input (a speed, a regime, a constraint, or the route's geometry) they clear automatically, since they no longer reflect a solve that's actually been run. There's no separate clear button; re-running Solve is what repopulates them.

ETA entry

Each ETA cell is a 24-hour text field (YYYY-MM-DD HHmm, with shorter forms like a bare HHmm accepted) 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. 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 at all leaves the header total 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 in a tooltip; the cells themselves stay read-only during selection, and clicking away clears it.

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. 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. 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.

A check reads the chart around the route once and keeps that reading ready, so checking the same route again — RERUN in the Route Check panel, a second look before deciding, or another officer checking the same plan — answers without waiting for the chart to be read over again. What the check reports is the same either way. A route over water not checked before, and the same route once the charts have been updated, are read afresh.

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 the route lies outside Plotroom's chart-analysis coverage, Route Check reports INCOMPLETE rather than clear. Auto Regimes and an explicit Boundary Wpts run stop with a chart-data unavailable message and do not change 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 from-land boundary distances (3 NM and 12 NM unless the ship's Boundaries page says otherwise — see Ship configuration). The boundary lines come from the authoritative charted limits: NOAA's published maritime limits for the 12, 24, and 200 NM lines, and the charted Three Nautical Mile Line where a chart carries it. Where a chart carries no 3 NM line, the line is derived from NOAA's 12 NM limit, falling back to a line measured from charted land; the 1 NM distance, which is not a standard line, is measured from charted land throughout — including islets charted as points. 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. Where the charted 3 NM line and the derived one run apart from each other, a single crossing still places a single waypoint, on the line the route reaches first; a route that genuinely leaves a boundary and comes back inside it keeps a waypoint each way. Plotroom keeps one marker for each physical crossing even where two source lines run close together. A charted Three Nautical Mile Line is followed continuously across its charted span: moving a manual waypoint may slide the crossing along that curve, but does not make a valid crossing disappear between pieces of the same charted line. 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.

Reverse, undo/redo, defaults, and time zone

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. The TZ selector sets the route's display time zone — it drives every time shown in the editor and on the passage plan, defaulting from the route's own geography.

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; the new vertex lands on that edge. 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. 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.

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.

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 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 and stays readable; it returns to the middle of the whole area once the area fits again.

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 to reshape a line, area, or circle. With a line, area, or clearing line selected, drag anywhere on its body that isn't a vertex handle — the line itself, or a polygon's interior — to move the whole object at once; drag a point, label, or circle by its center. A press that does not move the pointer counts as a plain click, so click-to-select and shift-click-to-toggle keep working. 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.

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, polygon exteriors become areas (holes are dropped), and simplestyle or KML colors snap to the nearest ECDIS color.

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.

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

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.

Rasters

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

Custom rasters are fleet-shared, not per-library: once one finishes processing, every signed-in member can see and toggle it from the library's Raster tab (and file it into libraries there, just like routes and overlays, for organization). They 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 or .bag file onto the library panel. Plotroom reads the file and renders it one of four ways:

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. A variable-resolution BAG displays its coarser overview grid rather than the full-resolution supergrid.

Small files are usually ready quickly; large survey coverages can take several minutes and show processing until they are ready. A progress bar is shown during large uploads. Interrupted, incomplete, or 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 any raster — custom or built-in reference — to open its detail card. Every kind gets an opacity slider (10–100%), and the setting survives a reload, saved per user. Single-band rasters, custom or Survey Progress, are also value-queryable: with one selected, clicking the map shows a small popup with the value at that point, and shows nothing where there's no data. A BAG raster's card additionally carries an Elevation / Uncertainty layer selector; the click-to-query popup reads whichever of the two is currently selected. Right-click a custom raster (or an overlay) and choose Zoom to layer to fit the map to its bounds — it's never automatic, and it isn't offered on the large Resources reference layers.

A single-band raster's card also carries a Min/Max pair and a color ramp, and a custom one carries a Flip sign (depths) box beneath them. Bathymetry grids commonly record depth as height below the surface, so their values run negative — -65.3 for 65.3 metres of water. Tick Flip sign (depths) and the card reads in positive depths instead: Min is the shallow end, Max the deep end, the legend beneath the ramp follows the same figures, and the click-to-query popup reports the depth rather than the negative elevation. The ramp is drawn with true depth meaning as well, so the default rainbow puts blue at the deep end, and Viridis — whose dark end already marks the deepest water — keeps dark on the deeps with the legend bar following suit. Plotroom ticks the box for you when an uploaded grid's values are almost entirely negative; untick it at any time to read the file's values exactly as recorded. The choice is remembered with the raster's other display settings, saved per user, and it is offered only on custom single-band rasters — a BAG's layers, an RGB or indexed raster, and the Resources reference layers have no sign to flip.

The Min and Max a raster opens with are rounded to one decimal place, so a stretch read from the file arrives as 21.0 and 65.3 rather than a long run of decimals; type any value you like over them. A single band whose whole range is narrower than that — a 0-to-1 index, say — keeps its exact range instead, since rounding would flatten it to a single value. Plotroom keeps the pair ordered while you type: raising Min past Max stops at Max, and lowering Max past Min stops at Min.

Beside those two labels the card also names the layer's own range, in small grey figures: Min 19.3 (layer) and Max 65.3 (layer). They report the values the raster itself holds — the stretch read from the file, or a Resources layer's published default range, such as Survey Progress's 0 and 255 — so a stretch you have typed over the boxes can always be compared with the real range and put back to it. The hints don't move when you edit the boxes; they follow Flip sign (depths) exactly as the boxes do, reading as positive depths while it is ticked. A raster with no stored range shows no hint, and a card with no Min/Max pair — a BAG's layers, an RGB or indexed raster — has none to show.

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. 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), 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. The zone's UTC offset is labeled right on the sheet.

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 solved route's Selected card opens the composer, on its Generate tab. Generating is disabled with a tooltip until the route has a solved schedule and is assigned to a ship, since a MOVREP needs departure/arrival times and the ship's name and call sign — the Check tab beside it has no such requirement and is always available.

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 gear 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 selected-route card in the library once that route is the active one (load it and click it in the layers panel, or use Zoom to route). An inactive Draft keeps the workflow action greyed and tells you to load it first; a Fleet template keeps a greyed explanation that it has no approval workflow. 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. 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 card in place of Submit for approval — 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: Approve… and Reject… open a multi-line comment box (optional on approve, worth using on reject so the submitter knows what to fix). 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.

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 gear 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.

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 everyone else, including your own Watch Officers.

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.

Reading a ship's configuration. Ship configuration opens for your associated ships as well: the selector at the top lists exactly those vessels, and every tab — safety depths and contours, defaults, regime bands, boundary distances, and the change history — is there to read. Nothing in it is yours to change; that stays with the ship's own officers.

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, 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 gear icon. 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.

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.
• 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 AMSR2 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 successful refresh, 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 its last refresh and any missing charts. 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.

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.

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. An interrupted or incomplete upload must be started again.
• Format. Plotroom accepts georeferenced GeoTIFFs: color imagery, single-band files with an embedded color table, and plain single-band grids. 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 that has been processing for more than an hour has stalled: the next time you open the raster list it reads error with that explanation, ready to be deleted and uploaded again.
• Connection. If the upload progress stops, check your connection before trying again.

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 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.