Following a contour
Levee & Contour Guidance chapter of the Ditch Assist app manual. The same text is in the app under Manual.
In the app Manual › Levee & Contour Guidance › Following a contour
With contours on the map, you choose one and drive it. The app keeps the camera centered on you so the lightbar and arrows stay lined up.
Picking a contour
- Select Nearest (sidebar) — grabs the contour closest to you and makes it active. The active contour turns orange and thickens.
- Tap a contour on the map — selects whichever line you tap.
- Next Contour (sidebar) — jumps to the nearest other contour at the active interval. This is usually the next elevation step uphill or downhill from where you are; it may or may not align with a physical levee or ridge.
The lightbar (where you are)
The lightbar runs across the top of the screen. It lights up on the side you have drifted toward — drift right of the contour and the blocks fill to the right. This is the standard autosteer convention: the lit side is your error side. The center block turns green when you are on the line. The blocks change color from green near center to yellow to red the farther off you are. A small label shows how much each block is worth.
The arrows (which way to steer)
Large arrows appear on the map flanking your position. They point the direction to steer to get back on the line — the opposite of the lightbar. Drift right and the arrows point left, toward the contour. More arrows light up the farther off you are. Steer toward the arrows; when you are on the line they disappear and the lightbar center goes green.
In short: the lightbar shows where you are, the arrows show where to go. Steer toward the arrows.
Automatic contour switching
You do not have to keep re-selecting. As you drive, the app watches which contour is genuinely closest and auto-switches the active line as you move from one to the next. On a looping or squiggly contour, it follows the strand you are actually driving rather than jumping to a far-off part of the same line.
Tap the lightbar to fine-tune
Tap the lightbar to open the guidance sensitivity dialog. There you can set:
- Full-scale deflection — how much cross-track the lightbar shows at full deflection (coarse for shaping, tight for finish work).
- On-track tolerance — how close counts as "on track."
- Edge buffer — how far inside the boundary contours get clipped (0–3 m, default 0.3 m / about 12 inches). Raise this to keep guidance off field edges where the tractor can't reach; set it to 0 to disable clipping entirely.
Deselect
Tap Deselect in the sidebar to drop the active contour and stop guidance. The contours stay on the map; you can select another any time.
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