Designing A Hole

[stillgolfing]

Is it possible in PGA2000 for a novice to design one hole, submit it here and get opinions about it. I'm expecting to be able to find out, somewhere, how to incorporate my own panorama (at least fo that particular hole) and all of the approriate trees, bushes, plants, terrain and texture and, depending on which hole I decide on, the clubhouse. If this is possible with PGA2000, then I definitely would consider trying to create a full course, if my one hole wonder passed inspection.
Thanks Dave

[Robert@]

Yes...just dont use the design wizard.

[Indy Anna Jones]

The only thing that confuses me is "panorama... at least for this hole." The pano is basically a 360-degree background for the entire course; 1 per customer, so to speak.

As for the rest of it, yes you can. Do your course work for the one hole, save it then exit (which eliminates the problem of sunspots), return and compile. What the game does then is play the same hole 18 times as long as you don't have any other holes routed.

Instead of submitting a partial course, though, I'd just suggest posting screenshots. Also, you might ask if someone is willing to playtest for you. One other comment: Sometimes it's difficult to get an idea of what the finished course might look like with only one hole finished, since you'd only have blank areas surrounding it.

[Mike New]

If I may interject for a moment...

"Do your course work for the one hole, save it then exit (which eliminates the problem of sunspots), return and compile." - You don't have to exit before the first compilation. The first compile of any architect session (regardless of the number of times you save the architect file) will be a successful one, i.e. no sunspots. Any further compilations within a single architect session will result in sunspots, however.

[spencerturner]

I respectfully dissagree with Roberts@ comment. I think the course wizard is a good place to start and practice for a new commer. It gives you the oppertunity to understand how the course architec works and play with all the choices available . Spencer.

[Indy Anna Jones]

IMO the Wizard has always been one of those halfway tools; it can be useful but it's too limited. I've used it to do my layout then, erase everything but the tourney tee and course rout and build from there. I've always wished that it would allow you to build the plot then use the wizard to lay down your routing, but you can't so in that it's too limited. It's obvious that several of the very early courses are nothing more than wizard routing then a few mounds and planting. It also won't allow you to route over water, so you can't really put down a river/stream, coast line, or large lake and draw a hole over it.

I didn't know about the "first time save" being safe; my habit has always been to save/exit reenter/compile, but hey, whatever works! However, it's a good habit to get into doing; it saves a lot of frustration especially later on when it takes several minutes to compile.

[stillgolfing]

Thanks to all for the comments.
Based on what I have read here I will probably attempt to rough in the whole plot and some typical plantings etc then complete one hole in full detail to see if I have a clue.
Since I'm considering my home course as the "Victim" (renamed, with a few of the less interesting hole replaced by the best from other local courses), I have printed a screenshot of the layout from google earth. Can that be used to auto-plot the routing in any way? I was just going to do do the elevation changes myself as they are fairly basic.
As far as the panorama goes, I wanted to use the real surrounding hills which I have many photos of. One of my photo manip programs has a "panorama module' which I have used, but obviously there would be resolution, frame size and file type requirements to bring the panorama into the Course Designer.I am assuming there are instructions somewhere on the site for doing this. but as It is early stages yet, I haven't checked that out.
Cheers, Dave