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# 2.2.12 Profile

The Profile dialog draws a profile showing elevations, distances and grades for a path on the layout.

Choose a path by using Left-Click on endpoints. As each endpoint is chosen, the path is extended via the shortest route. Selecting the end of the path trims the path back to a last Defined Elevation point (if any, otherwise the path is cleared).

If no route is possible an error message is displayed. There are several reasons why this might happen:

- The tracks are not connected. You can see this more easily if you turn on Display->Option->"Display Unconnected End Points" as Exception. You can also check this by using Shift+Left-Click on one track using the Select command (Section 2.2.16). This selects all tracks connected (directly or indirectly). See if the other track is selected.

- One of the endpoints on the route is Ignored (Section 2.2.5). Look for blue dots on the expected path when using the Profile or Elevation (Section 2.2.5) commands.

- The only route connects to a section of track that is already on the path and is not the end of the path. Remove the end of the path until the connected track is not on the path.

The path is drawn in the Profile Color (Section 2.10.1) (default Purple) on the layout.

If the shortest path is not what you want, you can choose endpoints that are closer to the end of the path. Also, you can Ignore (Section 2.2.5) endpoints to prevent the path from choosing a route through that endpoint. Shift+Right-Click (Section 3.4) displays a pop-up menu that allows you to change the specified endpoint to be a Defined, Ignored or None Elevation endpoint.

Each Defined Elevation endpoint on the path is drawn as a Vertical bar, labeled with its height and distance from the beginning of the path.

The Grade between points is displayed between the vertical bars. The Grade line is drawn in Blue if that portion of the path does not contain more than one Shortest Path between Defined Elevation endpoints. Otherwise it is drawn in Red, to indicate the grade is an average and the actual grade may vary for any particular track segment. See Computing Dynamic Elevation (Section 2.2.5.1) for more details.

Stations on the path are displayed along the bottom of the Profile.

The heights of Defined Elevations can be changed by using Left+Drag on the profile window. As you Drag, the new elevation and grades to each side are displayed at the bottom of the profile dialog.

The Change button makes the changes in the Profile dialog permanent.

The Reset button deletes all changes since the last press of Change or the start of the dialog.

The Clear button preserves elevation settings established along the current profile path, removes all profile points and leaves the Profile dialog open for selection of the next set of profile points. This function is useful when there's a need to view elevations along multiple profile paths.

The Print button prints the dialog. The aspect ratio is preserved on the print-out. You will probably want to print in landscape format.

The dialog can be closed with the 'X' button in the window's titlebar.