This is not necessarily a feature request. It is a suggestion for improvement to this fabulous software.
I have been studying SGP to get better at it and I have noticed that I may have chosen the wrong path through the software for plate solving. I have been using the Control Panel to choose and setup a plate solver AND to plate solve. However, it looks like the Control Panel is meant to be a place where devices are setup and the “Centering” button is what is meant to be used to plate solve, center, etc.
It is not a hinderance as it is, but to me it provides a better view of the software operation and what is expected. If the “Plate Solve” tab did not have a solving / blind solving option at all I feel I would have used the software in a way it was intended to.
What I am basically recommending is to remove the access to plate solving from the “Plate Solve” tab, and especially since the user manual calls Plate Solvers as a sort of a virtual device, consider changing the label of that tab to “Plate Solver” so that it is recognized as a device like Camera, etc. and the expectations by a new user exploring the features would intuitively be to set the device as opposed to operate it there.
I am writing up on the software, by the way. I find this method be the best method for me to learn it and this is a great software that needs to be learned deeply. It is more like an Astro Photography Planner, which is much more than a Sequence Generator.
This is sometimes true. That said, for some users with small monitors or resolution not sufficient to use all of the docking modules, users will sometimes choose to consolidate action functionality in the CP because it can present itself in front of image data and then disappear when it’s not needed. The operating pattern here is that docking modules:
Provide functionality to alter the view / behavior of the image rendering system
Provide shortcuts to common actions in the CP
It is certainly possible I have missed your point. My view of this world uses plate solve and center as actions with two entirely different end results.
I don’t know if my point is missed. I am letting you know that discovering
the “centering” button at the same time as learning that plate solving was
a link in the centering chain have changed my view of how SGP would be
better understood. You do have to center on known star and then plate solve
to make that centering and slewing more exact. I wasn’t plate solving in
that way.
Yes, the CP can get activated and then hidden away, and the same feature
could be built into the Centering dialog too.
By naming the tab “plate solve” I have been taking it as an action and
always felt that an action is sort of out of place being among “devices”.
In my imagination if the tab is called “plate solver” it then is a device
with control parameters.
This won’t affect me anymore as I have overcome. My message was just a
feedback.