1. Use the keyboard. I find with most applications using the keyboard is much more efficient than using the mouse—VNS is no exception. Here are some selected shortcuts:
   
        Arrow keys — Scroll your display
        Plus Key(s) — Zoom in
        Minus Key(s) — Zoom out
        F2 — Center on boat
        F7 — Create a mark
   
   
2. Display Depth Units. Knowing whether the soundings shown on your chart are denominated in feet, fathoms or meters is important. Go to Tools | Options | Console and check "Depth Units" to display depth units for the active chart. Once displayed, drag the console item and dock it in your console.
   
   
3. ETA for an active route. Hold your cursor over an active route and a yellow tool tip will pop up with an ETA to the end of the route. Unfortunately this is the only easy place to find this tidbit of information.
   
   
4. Exit VNS frequently to save changes. VNS has no File | Save command. If you have created something worth saving (routes, marks, custom console, etc), File | Exit, then restart VNS. Your changes should be saved.
   
   
5. Don’t Overuse Tracking. Track marks take up a lot of system resources. Avoid keeping thousands of miles of tracks or your system might bog down.
   
   
6. Backup. If you create any data of value (routes, tracks or marks) make sure you backup. There are a couple ways to do this, but my preferred approach is to copy the navobj.txt file to a floppy, or at least to another location on your hard drive. VNS saves all routes, marks and tracks to this file and making a copy of the file will ensure your data is preserved. You should be able to find this file in c:\Programs Files\Nobeltec\Visual Series\Database\.
   
   

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