After a scheme is defined, it must have plants assigned in order to use it on a plan. Those assigned plants display the scheme on the plan where they are "planted". So, the next step is to build the associations.
At the top of the screen we can select the scheme we are going to assign to the selected plants.
Skipping the radio buttons for the moment, on the left side of the Assignment page is the Plant Types list box. This box displays several groups of plants from which the final selections may be made. These generic plant types correspond to the Punch! categories: Annuals, Bulbs, Cacti, Edibles, Grasses, Groundcovers, Hedges, Perennials, Shrubs, Trees, Tropicals and Wildflowers. There is an additional category of "Current plants", which is the group of plants that already have been placed on the current plan. Finally will come the categories of custom plants, those created with the Plant Editor PowerTool. Custom categories may be one level or two level; all the individual categories are separate line items.
The list boxes (this Types list box and the other two mentioned below) are multiple-select boxes. That means that more then one item may be selected for action. Any selected item that is clicked on is un-selected. When the action is requested on the list by an external button push, all the currently selected items are treated by the action.
Below the Plant Types list are a pair of buttons. The left one has the label Clear plant type selections. When it is clicked on, all the selections in the Plant Types list are un-selected. The second button is List selections with an arrow pointing to the candidates list box. When it is clicked, The plants types selected are examined to extract all the plants in them. All these plants, as a single group, are sorted by name, the plants that have been assigned to schemes already removed, and the list is then displayed in the Candidate Plants list to the right of the File Types list. Using this button may take a fair amount of time; up to a minute and an half, in some cases.
It is possible that PlantTracks will seem to stall when categories are selected for the first time for display in the candidate list. This is because each of the plants in the category has to be read in. This happens the first time only, and may take up to a minuite or more, depending on the number of plants to be displayed and the cpu speed of your machine. An hour glass is displayed to indicate that you should wait.
Here's where the radio buttons at the top left come in. They select whether the common plant name or the latin plant name (also known as the Linnaean or Botanical name), which is in a standard scientific format of "genus species variety", is to be used in alphabetizing and displaying the plant names. Changing the radio button will cause the candidate and selected lists to be redrawn immediately.
The candidate list and the selected list show, of course, those plants which have not yet, and which have been selected for the current scheme. As a plant is moved from one list to the other, it will disappear from the list it was in and appear in the destination list. A pair of buttons displayed between the lists facilitate that movement. The button labelled Select these plants for the current scheme will move the selected plants in the candidates list to the selected list, and the other, labelled Remove these plants form the current scheme moves the plants currently selected in the selected list back to the candidates. When you change schemes, or press the OK button at the bottom of the PlantTracks dialog, the plants which are in the selected box are assigned to the current scheme if you OK that action in the popup that will occur. Two further buttons allow for the selection or removal of the entire contents of the candidate / selected lists respectively.
Below the list boxes are some plant information features that are triggered whenever a plant in either list is selected. The plant's maximum height and growth rate are displayed, and the common or Latin name (the other from the name type selected for the lists). Also appearing is the thumbnail picture of the plant. A button named More plant details will cause a popup dialog box to appear, featuring an exhaustive display of the Punch! data for that plant, including a couple of percentage values at the bottom labelled Use of height and Use of width. These figures tell how much of the full vertical and horizontal extent of the plant sample are used, and that number for height affects the 3D display of plants, because the growth algorithm assumes the full extent of the picture is used, even when the plant doesn't fill it up. The full picture used to reproduce the plant in 3D is displayed on the popup as well.
PlantTracks and the contents of this help file are
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