Adding User-selected Files to Your VDF | Optimizing Your Distribution | Distributing VDFs Globally with AGI Globeserver | Adding ESRI Map Documents to Your VDF

Best Practices for Authoring A VDF

When optimizing the VDF, you should consider whether included datasets are actually needed by your audience.

Knowing the data can be leveraged by each application can help you decide what to include in the VDF. If you want your VDF to be accessible by all applications, then author your VDF with a comprehensive selection of content.

Adding User-selected Files to Your VDF

In addition to STK specific content, you can add your own non-STK files to your VDF. These may include data files, reports, presentations, HTML pages, scripts, spreadsheets, and other files beneficial to the audience.

You can also manually add files that are not automatically included by the authoring process. For various reasons, there are file types and datasets that do not normally get included in the VDF. The data files can be large, indirectly associated, or exhibit a complex nature. Some datasets that are not automatically included are:

• AGI World Terrain
• DMED terrain
• AGI Celestial Imagery
• AGI High Resolution Maps
• Radar Advanced Environment
• TLE files
• STK databases (satellite, facility, city, star)
• Map details
• Space weather files
• 2525 symbology
• TIREM
• Planetary Spice Files
• VPF data
• Plugin scripts
• Core astrodynamic files pertaining to celestial body properties (other than Earth orientation parameters). These files are already part of AGI products.

For datasets that are large, it is best not to copy them to the VDF. Instead use a network-based solution (see Distributing VDFs within organizations). For smaller datasets, such as Astrogator files and plugin scripts, you can add them individually from the Authoring a VDF dialog box, or if they already exist in your scenario folder, you can add them quickly by selecting Copy scenario folder contents.

Note: The following datasets are always linked; that is, content cannot be copied to the VDF. You will need to ensure the user has connectivity to the same datasets called by your scenario.

• Terrain and imagery residing on an AGI Globeserver. By design, content that is streamed from a Globeserver cannot be stored locally.
• Enterprise GIS databases referenced in an ESRI map document (.mxd). The map document and local geodatabases can be either linked or included. In most cases, the .mxd should be saved in ArcGIS with relative data paths. (See GIS Analyst best practices for more information.)

Optimizing Your Distribution

Distributing VDFs within organizations

You can minimize the size of a VDF by pointing to data rather than copying it. Like a scenario, VDFs maintain network links.

Many users already use networks for sharing data among STK scenarios. These can include terrain, imagery, geospatial vector data, 3D models and textures, cloud files, and more. When your scenario points to these datasets on the network, you can have the VDF do the same. In the Authoring a VDF dialog box, do not select copy …. for datasets that are already referenced to the network. The VDF will preserve the network paths and the data will not copy. You can send this VDF to users on the same network and have them see the full content.

Distributing VDFs Globally with AGI Globeserver

When authoring for external users—those in other organizations for example—more data needs to be copied into the VDF; however, you can leverage AGI Globeserver to stream terrain and imagery to users with internet access. These datasets are typically the largest and can significantly reduce the VDF size while maintaining a rich geospatial context.

Distributing VDFs to Non-connected Users

When authoring for users without network or internet access, you must selectively choose what data to copy in the VDF. You have the option of not copying large datasets—such as globes, 3D models, markers—and rely on default ones that will activate on the receiving end. For other potentially large datasets, such as analytical terrain, you can make a smaller dataset or simply not include it. These tradeoffs are part of the authoring process. The VDF will display whatever content it finds in the file, and may prompt the user in the case of globes. Lacking a network or an AGI Globeserver, you can send a custom globe to the user and have AGI Viewer prompt for its location.

Adding ESRI Map Documents to Your VDF

Use the following table to determine whether an ESRI map document (.mxd, .lyr, .mxt, .pmf) can be included in a VDF file and, if it cannot be included, what the options are for the AGI Viewer user.