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Apex prescription problems
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Macy
Posted 10/10/2006 14:39 (#50174 - in reply to #50160)
Subject: A few comments...



I have dinked around with this some over the last couple of months, as part of testing our own stuff.   Here are a couple of things that I learned that might relate to what you are seeing.

  • Anything that you import is imported as a management zone.  You still have to make a separate prescription out of it in Apex.  It sound like you already knew this and were getting hung up on this second part.
  • When my imported management zone had only a few polygons (like a soil type map), and there was a column in the shapefile that was the application rate that I wanted, then the process worked ok.   By selecting to create my Rx rate from the map values, I got an Rx map that was correctly copied from the selected management zone attribute (column) with the correctly copied rates.
  • When my imported management zone was something more like a surface map, with lots of different rate values, creating an Rx did not work very well.   My default "in field" application rate was assigned to each value in the legend, rather than getting the average of the range value for each of the displayed ranges.    They only way to get an Rx map that looked like what I originally imported was to manually set the application rate for each of the ranges.   That was a pain in the butt.    I think, from your description of "setting an average" that this is what you are experiencing.

Actually, on closer inspection, I see that the shapefile with only a few values created a "values" theme... where each item in the theme represents a single unique value.   But the shapefile with lots of values creates a "range" theme, where each item in the theme is a range... 3 - 6, 6 - 9, 9 - 12, etc.   So apparently, when Apex kicks into Range theme mode, it doesn't know how to derive an Rx value from the range.

I just tried the 1.4 update that was released today.   I did not find any changes in this area.

I guess one option you have is to just manually enter the rate that you want for each of the theme breaks.   That will get very old if you have a lot of fields.

Another option is to modify the process that you use to create your shapefiles.   Instead of going with a large number of values, clump all similar values into a single value.... group all values between 100 and 120 lbs/acre into a single value like 110 lbs/acre.   I'm not sure how many of these values you can have before Apex kicks into "range" theme mode.   My test map had 5.   You would just have to experiment.

Or, a third option is to run our EASi Suite program in demo mode this fall.  MapShots will make the same offer we have made in the past... you can request a Demo CD that will enable you to more easily create GS1 and GS2 prescriptions.    We will sanction you to use the "demo" for production work, anticipating that future releases of Apex will make the Rx generation/import process more efficient, and that you would only need to use EASi Suite to fulfill a short term need.   And of course, any support that you need would be a lower priority than our normal customers.

If interested in the latter, the process would be:

  1. Export a single shapefile from Apex (or any other software of choice) with all of your field boundaries, and import this into EASi Suite to setup all of your farms and fields.
  2. Import one of your Rx shapefiles into EASi Suite to create a template for the unit of measure and other meta data not present in a shapefile.
  3. Import the rest of your Rx shapefiles into EASi Suite as a batch process, using the template that you created in step 2.
  4. Create a product definition for the product for which you want to generate an Rx.
  5. Run the Bulk Export tool to write the data to GS1, GS2, AgLeader, Falcon, SiteMate, Raven, MidTech, or whatever.   During this process, you can set minimums, maximums, nutrient percentages, proration, subtract fixed application rates, and create summary reports of required quantities.

It is never easy moving data from one software package to another.  If you only need to do a few fields, it probably isn't worth setting up another package (if Apex is set up).   If you have lots of fields, the overhead of migrating to an alternative package may be worth it.



Edited by Macy 10/10/2006 14:46
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