A-2. Before You Start
A-3. The Research Plots Wizard
A-4. Output Options
Now choose MMP Tools | Advanced | Design Research Plots, then follow each step's instructions, clicking Next to advance to the next step. You can click Cancel at any time if you get stuck or need to start over.
- Change the plot width if it's different from the default (60 feet).
With row crops, this is typically a multiple of row width.
- Normally you leave the snap-to box checked if you want the first plot's boundary to coincide exactly with the field boundary.
- As indicated, click the +shp button twice on the MapWindow
toolbar. The first click activates the toolbar, the second click activates the
shapefile editor so you can start drawing.
- The wizard adds a temporary drawing layer named "design_edge" that you'll draw on.
- With the default snap-to option (see step 1), the line you draw will turn red when it's aligned exactly with the field boundary.
- You should now see your field divided into plots.
- Normally you leave both boxes checked to ensure that plots do not extend beyond the field boundary and to remove plots that are significantly smaller than the median plot size.
- You can delete one or more plots from the design, for example to remove
unusable areas of the field from the design.
- In this example there are 21 plots in the field that will be divided into
4 block of 5 plots each, meaning the last plot will not be used in the design.
Note that we could have deleted a plot in the previous step so there would
be exactly 20 plots here.
- By default the wizard will assign treatments randomly to all blocks. Uncheck the first box to assign treatments to the first block in treatment order rather than in a random order.
- The wizard will color the plots in the plots layer based on assigned treatment number. If you check the second box, it will add a second layer called "plots by rep" where the plots will be colored by rep. Note that this only adds the underlying plots shapefile a second time to the project; it does not create a second shapefile.
- Enter a name for each treatment. Note that you can edit the treatment
names later if necessary using the Attribute Table Editor on the
MapWindow toolbar.
- When you click Done, the wizard colors and labels the plots, then exits.
To create a legend that shows your plots' coloring scheme, make sure the plots layer is displayed and uncheck any layers you don't want included in the legend, then choose Edit | Copy | Legend or Edit | Export | Legend. For example, the legend might look like this:
Tip: To change the plots' coloring scheme, right-click the plots layer and choose Properties from the popup menu. Then select Coloring Scheme in the Legend Editor and click the edit button. To change the degree of transparency for the color fill, change the Transparency Percent in the Legend Editor.
Last updated: July 5, 2013
Copyright © 2011,2013 Purdue Research Foundation.