LightListManager User Guide

Saving and Restoring Filtered Lists

Save Filter Menu Not Active — Fig 1, The Save Filter Menu Item Disabled

Once a filter has been applied to the Light Lists, it can be restored on a subsequent program session using the "Save Filtered List" and "Load Filtered List" menu items. Saved filters can be used to monitor changes to the Light Lists for specific areas or specific types of navaids. In Fig. 1, I have applied a text filter of "NOAA" to select all NOAA buoys in the V02D05, V3D07 and V06D11 Light Lists. Turns out there are 45 entries in those lists with "NOAA" in the name field. For whatever reason I want to save this filter so I can restore it at a later time. However, in Fig. 1, the "Save Filtered List" menu item is disabled.

Filter Save Menu Enabled — Fig. 2, The Save Filter Menu Item Enabled

Before you can save a filter you have to give it a name. In fig. 2, I have entered a filter name of "NOAA" in the text box and the "Save Filter" menu item has been enabled.

Now when I click the "Save Filtered List" menu item the parameters of my "NOAA" filter are save in the file identified in the message box as shown in Fig. 3.

Openning a Saved Filter — Fig. 4, Openning a Saved filter

Sometime later I want to restore that "NOAA" filtered list. In Fig. 4 I have clicked on the "Load Filtered List" menu item and a file open dialog box has openned so that I can select the Filter file for "NOAA". The program saves the filter name as part of the file name to help identify the filter file.

Filter Restored — Fig. 5, Filtered Light List Restored

When I select the "NOAA-Light List Filter.xml" file the prevously created filtered list is restored as shown in Fig. 5.

Saving Filtered Content as an OpenCPN Layer

In Figure 6, I have filtered the District 7 light list to just those Navaids that cover the St. Augustine Inlet (red ellipse). This is one of those inlets subject to frequent shoaling for which NOAA does not plot the location of Navaids on their charts. I wish to use the layer feature in OpenCPN to plot those navaids on the chart display. This can be accomplished by saving the contents to a GPX file and then copying the GPX file to the Layers folder under the OpenCPN data folder. With a recent version of LightList Manager I have implemented a "Save to OpenCPN" button (green ellipse) to accomplish this action in a single step. Once the GPX file is saved the contents can be displayed on the RNC and ENC charts in OpenCPN using the chart layer feature. Refer to the OpenCPN user guide on the use of this feature.

This button only works with OpenCPN. Other chart plotting software may provide a similar capability, but I have no experience with those implementations.