Demo Tutorial

This is a tutorial for the free demonstration version of Ranges. It allows the entry, viewing, editing and exporting of location and other map data, and the creation of convex polygons around locations. It demonstrates the Log window for displaying analyses progress and the Statistics window for inspecting output from the analyses.

To compare functionality in the different versions of Ranges, please visit the [web site]. This page describes a short tutorial to introduce you to the Demo version. This wiki contains the Help for the full version of Ranges and can give you an idea of the additional functionality it offers.

Quick Start

To help you with this demonstration some files have been pre-loaded. These files can be changed for running the other example files or to run Minimum Convex Polygons (MCPs) on your own data.

1. Start Ranges and click the Demo button at the bottom of the About form. You will see an animated display representing 4 blackbirds moving around, with their MCPs as a background map.
2. Use the dropdown at the top of the map to change from 'animate locations by sequence to other views.
3. Click on the Location button tab at the top of the screen; some data for blackbirds has been pre-loaded.
4. Click the red Run Analysis button on the lower right side.
5. When the analysis completes the main form will be loaded with 100% convex polygon (MCP) analysis of blackbird home ranges and the statistics for the analysis will be displayed in a new window.
6. Close the Statistics window to see the main form. The screen shows the outline around the locations (as a Background map). To see other ranges click on the different ranges in the Edge Shapes table.
7. View the progress of all analyses run in this session by clicking the Log button.
8. Click open in in the Background panel to find <RangesFolder>\samples\blackbird\blackbird_map.ves. This will show the habitat content of the MCP outlines. Change the clipped option in the Background panel to all to see the surrounding habitat too.

A Second Analysis

To see how easy it is to load files, output spreadsheet-ready statistics and change other options, please follow the following procedure.

1. Click on the Location button tab at the top of the screen
2. Click on convex polygons
3. Use the browse button to navigate to the file blackbird.loc (or another location file)
4. Click on selected cores and edit the Core %s, e.g. 50 70 90.
5. Click on arithmetic mean centre (Ac) from the Choose Peel Centre menu.
6. Press the Make Selections button. To select ranges 2 and 4, click on range 2, hold down CTRL and click on range 4, then press the OK button.
7. Tick the Output edge file checkbox.
8. Tick the Output stats & areas file checkbox.
   You can edit the automatic filenames if you are doing multiple runs, but the automatic name makes analysis much quicker and easier, recording exactly what you are doing.
9. Click the Run Analysis button to start the analysis.
10. On completion the Statistics window will opwn. See the each range in a row with the birds Age, Sex etc. and the Areas of each core at the end of the row. This data can also be accessed in a csv file (e.g. the automatically named <RangesFolder>\samples\blackbird\blackbird_xa_50%75%95%.csv).
11. Close the Statistics window. On the main form, you will see the first range with the cores. The core in blue is the one highlighted in the Edge Shapes box on the left side of the screen. Clicking on the different ranges will reveal the different core sizes.
12. Use the pulldown menu at the top of the map panel to select display cores same as 1st selected and see all ranges with the same core. Try the other display options there.

For more information explore other areas of the help files or email [info@anatrack.com].