Combination Tool Designer
Compose a tool from a perimeter and one or more inner components. Layout is automatic — adjust each component's parameters and the preview updates.
Perimeter
Inner Tools 0
No inner tools yet. Pick a kind above and click Add. Layout uses list order — first item is treated as the largest / outermost.
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The perimeter is the outside of the tool.
- Round protractor — a full circle of bearings around the edge, for measuring and plotting directions.
- Square protractor — the same bearings laid out around a square, whose straight edges sit easily along a map's grid lines.
- Rounded rectangle — a plain clear plate with no markings of its own, just a holder for the inner tools.
The perimeter grows automatically to fit the inner tools you add.
- UTM Slot — two scales meeting at a corner, with a slot cut through the plastic. Line the corner up on your point to read its coordinates, or mark a point through the slot.
- UTM Corner Ruler — the same two scales without the slot, for reading coordinates from a grid square's corner.
- UTM Grid — a grid square divided into tenths, for reading a point's position inside a grid square at a glance.
- Text — a line of text to label your tool: your name or organization, or the map it goes with.
Layout is automatic: the first tool in the list is treated as the largest and placed outermost.
The protractor's size: its diameter for a round protractor, its width for a square one.
Inner tools need room, so the protractor grows on its own to fit them; the hint under the field says when the tools are setting the size. Enter a larger value to make it bigger than the tools need — a larger protractor has more room between tics and reads more precisely. The price follows the size.
The largest is 10″ across, a round protractor's diameter or a square one's width: the widest tool that fits on the 12″-wide sheets we print and laser-cut on, after the margins and the order label.
A small hole cut through the protractor's center — the point angles are measured from.
Put a pencil point or pin through it to hold the center on your starting point while you turn the tool, or mark the point on the map. Choose None to keep the center solid.
A hole near one corner for a lanyard, cord or key ring, so the tool can hang from your neck or be clipped to a map case.
The hole goes in the top-left corner just inside the numbers, so no reading on the scale is lost. If an inner tool fills that corner, the protractor grows a little to make room.
The unit the protractor's ring is marked in. Use the one that matches your compass and your instructions.
- Degrees — 360 to a circle; the most common.
- Quadrant degrees — 0–90° in each quarter, for bearings written like N 30° E.
- NATO mils — 6400 to a circle; used by NATO and US military compasses.
- Warsaw mils — 6000 to a circle; former Warsaw Pact countries.
- Swedish streck — 6300 to a circle.
- Milliradians — about 6283 to a circle; the mathematical unit.
- Gradians — 400 to a circle.
Mils, streck and milliradians run into the thousands, so four-digit numbers crowd the ring. With this on, the labels drop the last two digits — 6400 mils reads 64, 3200 reads 32 — which is how most military protractors are marked.
The smallest step between tic marks on the ring. Auto picks a step that leaves the tics comfortably far apart for the protractor's size.
Choose a smaller step, like ½° or 5 mils, to read bearings more finely. Smaller steps need a larger protractor so the tics don't merge into a grey band; steps too fine for the current size are greyed out and say what size they need.
Prints N, E, S and W — or all eight points including NE, SE, SW and NW — inside the ring, so you can tell at a glance which way the tool is turned.
Adds a second ring of numbers just inside the main labels showing each direction's back bearing — the opposite direction, 180° away. With them you can read the bearing back to where you came from without doing arithmetic.
Choosing a color for them keeps them from being mistaken for the main numbers. Cyan stays visible under a red headlamp, where red would disappear — pick it for night use.
Lines across the middle of the protractor for lining it up with the map's grid lines (or meridians), so the ring's 0 points to the map's north.
- North–South line — one line through the center.
- Cross — north–south and east–west lines.
- Grid — evenly spaced lines in both directions, so a grid line is always close by to line up with.
Inner tools cover the lines where they sit.
A compass points to magnetic north, which differs from the map's grid north by the declination printed on the map — for example 9° E.
Enter that declination here, with its direction. The degree ring — tics, numbers and N/E/S/W — turns by that amount while the center lines and inner tools stay square to the map's grid. Line the tool up with the grid and the ring reads magnetic bearings directly, ready to set on your compass, with no adding or subtracting.
Use the same E or W as the map: a 9° E declination takes a 9° E offset. Declination differs from place to place and changes over the years, so a tool with an offset is right for one area and one map. Leave it at 0 for a tool that reads grid bearings.
Tinted label backgrounds are a semi-transparent white wash that lets the underlying map show through but gives the labels enough contrast to remain legible.
They appear pink in the preview so you can see where they sit. The actual tool prints them as a semi-transparent white wash.
Pads every label to the same number of digits — 000, 010, 090 instead of 0, 10, 90 — the way bearings are often written and spoken, so they can't be misread.
The scale of the map you'll use the tool with, as printed in the map's margin — for example 1:24,000 for US 7.5-minute topographic maps.
The ruler's markings are spaced for that scale, so it must match your map exactly: on a map of any other scale, the measurements will be wrong.
The spacing of the UTM grid lines on your map, in meters — usually 1000 m (1 km) on topographic maps. The ruler's scales span one grid square, so you can read a point's position from the nearest grid lines.
How much ground the grid covers, in meters — one map grid square is usually 1000 m. It is divided into tenths, so you can read a point's position inside the square at a glance.
Only spans that come out a readable size at your map scale are offered.
Prints a colored band around the slot so it stands out against the map.
Cyan stays visible under a red headlamp where red would disappear — pick it for night-vision-friendly tools.
Label interval — how often the scale is numbered, in meters on the ground.
Min tic interval — the finest tic marks, in meters on the ground. Finer tics let you read a position more precisely; coarser ones keep a small-scale ruler uncluttered.
A line of text printed on your tool — your name or your organization's, the map or area it's made for, or a reminder like a declination. Add several text blocks for several lines.
It prints in black, laid out for you in the position you choose. Larger text needs more room, so the tool grows to fit it.
- Top or Bottom — straight text above or below the inner tools. Several blocks in the same position stack in list order.
- Center (plain plates) — in the middle of the plate. A protractor's center has to stay clear for measuring, so protractors don't offer it.
- Curved along the ring (round protractors) — text that follows the inside of the ring at the top or bottom, the classic place for a name on a protractor.