Flight areas

A flight area is the boundary you intend to fly, plus everything derived from it: the take-off and landing zones, the operational volumes, and the split pieces if one launch position cannot cover the whole site. Flight areas belong to the project, and jobs borrow them.

Before you start

There is no top-level flight areas list. They live in the Layers rail of a project’s Spatial tab. Editing the organisation’s default VLOS distance and operational volumes needs the Manage org settings permission; saving per-area operational volume overrides needs Manage safety. Everything else is open to any member of the organisation.

Steps

1. Open the project Spatial tab

   Open the project, select Spatial, and find the Flight areas group in the Layers rail. Empty, it reads Create a flight area to define the operation.

2. Start a new area

   Use the group’s add button, New flight area. The wizard opens on step one, Boundaries. Under Flight area details, enter a Name — required, up to 80 characters — and an optional Description.

3. Get a boundary in

   Three ways, all on the same panel. Upload KML takes .kml files up to 10 MB each. Draw polygon lets you trace the boundary on the map. Draw buffered line draws a line and thickens it by the Buffer distance in metres beside the button — useful for corridors. If the project already has KMLs on file, Pick existing project KML reuses one. As boundaries land, Geometry summary fills in Total area and Max distance.

4. Work out where you can launch from

   Select Next to reach Risk & Assignment, then open TOAL zones from the Risk management list. Set Maximum VLOS distance (m) — the placeholder shows your organisation default with (org default) beside it — and select Compute TOAL zone. The app draws a VLOS-radius circle at every boundary vertex and intersects them; the overlap is where a take-off and landing position keeps every vertex in sight.

5. Read the verdict

   A green Single TOAL fits means one launch position covers the whole area. All N pieces solvable means the current grouping needs that many positions. Multi-TOAL needed means no single position works at that radius — raise the radius, or split the area.

6. Assign it and finish

   Still on Risk & Assignment, use Assign to jobs to put the area on the jobs that need it, then select Finish.

Options

Splitting an area that needs more than one launch position

Open Area splitting from Risk management. The dialog is explicit about what it does: The original geometry is replaced in place with the pieces; re-running the TOAL tool will then compute one zone per piece. This action cannot be undone.

Two methods, chosen with the Split method control:

• Manual — select Draw cut line and click two or more points to draw a line across the boundaries, then double-click to finish. Keep drawing to add more cuts; each line divides the pieces further.
• Automatic — 50 / 50, 70 / 30 and Equal pieces cut for balanced areas with the shortest cuts. By length makes fixed-length sections along the longest axis, for railways, pipelines and roads. Min TOAL plan is the one to reach for after a multi-TOAL verdict: it picks the fewest launch positions over a coverage model, then derives split pieces assigned to those positions.

Min TOAL plan runs in the background — you get Please wait while we optimize your job site, a live best-so-far count and a Cancel button. Changing any boundary or the VLOS radius invalidates a running or finished plan, so a stale preview can never be applied. Select Apply split when you are happy; pieces are saved as boundaries named Part 1, Part 2 and so on, and the previous TOAL result is cleared.

Overlap zones

Once an area has several pieces, each piece gets its own TOAL zone, and those zones can coincide. Where they do you get an overlap zone: one launch position placed inside it can fly every piece it covers. The coverage count is shown as a multiplier — a zone marked ×3 serves three pieces — and overlaps are what let you get away with fewer launch positions than pieces.

The inspector’s Overlap zones section lists them. Edit zone shape puts the zone on the map with the banner EDITING ZONE and the instruction Drag vertices to adjust; Save keeps the edit, which is then marked · edited and can be put back with Reset to computed shape. To see zones rather than full TOAL coverage, use Show TOAL overlaps only in the inspector’s control row.

Operational volumes

Under Operational volumes you set Contingency buffer (m), Max height AGL (m) and Max speed (m/s), then Save area overrides. New areas start from the organisation defaults set under Flight area operational defaults; Apply/reset current defaults copies the current saved defaults back into an existing area.

The rest of the inspector

Select a flight area to get Make primary, Max-distance line, Show TOAL overlaps only, Locate on map, Edit flight area, Send to job(s) and, on a project, Delete flight area. Making an area primary un-stars whatever was primary before, and puts it on every job in the project — the note reads Primary — on every job in this project. There is no rename control and no duplicate: rename through Edit flight area.

Working from a job

A job’s rail shows the same Flight areas group, hinted Add an area from the project, or create a new one. Its add button is Add flight area and gives two choices — Select from project list to borrow one, or Create new flight area. On a job the delete control is replaced by Remove from this job, which just unassigns it, and is hidden entirely for the primary area.

What happens next

The starred flight area is what project RAMS captures as geo evidence, and what the preflight survey and readiness checks read. Download the geometry as KML from the inspector — Download all boundaries as KML, Download all TOAL zones as KML or Download operational volume evidence as KML.

Troubleshooting

A KML upload is rejected. Only .kml is accepted — the toast reads Only .kml files are supported (KMZ coming soon). Files over 10 MB are refused by name.

Min TOAL plan is greyed out. No VLOS radius is available. The hint says where to fix it: Set a VLOS distance in Organization → Settings (or the TOAL tool) to use this. There is no built-in default — an organisation that has never set Maximum VLOS distance has none.

The TOAL tool says to add a boundary first. Compute runs on geometry. Add at least one boundary to the flight area first.

Save area overrides does nothing but show an error. The operational volume fields are visible to everyone but only writable with Manage safety.

A split preview will not apply. Boundaries or the radius changed after the plan was computed. Re-run the split.