Elevations

Early access. Elevations are evolving — your feedback shapes where this goes next. Behavior, defaults, and settings may change as we learn from real use.

The Elevations tab in the course builder draws contour lines on your course map. There are two ingredients you can mix:

Sampled terrain — the system fetches public elevation data for your map area in one click.
Manual elevation points — drop signed +/− points on the canvas to nudge the surface where the sample feels wrong, or to add terrain the provider can't see (a recently shaped mound, a pit, a elevated tee pad).

What you get per plan

Club — manual elevation points. Contours render around the points you drop. No automatic terrain sampling.
Pro — adds Sample terrain on top: pull real elevation data for the map area in one click, then layer manual points on top to correct anything.
Free / Hobby — no elevation features.

Where automatic sampling works (and where it doesn't)

Automatic terrain sampling pulls from public elevation data that varies in quality by region. Some areas (often dense urban / well-mapped countries) have sharp, detailed data — contours come out smooth and accurate right away. Other areas only have coarse data — sometimes coarse enough that drawing contours over it would look broken, with axis-aligned grid lines that aren't real terrain.

When the data for your course is too coarse to be honest about, Parkdly hides the automatic contours and shows a banner in the Elevations tab. This is intentional — we'd rather show nothing than draw something that looks like a bug. You can still drop manual elevation points and they'll render contours normally on top of a flat base, even when sampling isn't usable.

We're working on integrating higher-resolution sources (national LiDAR datasets and similar) so more courses get sharp contours over time. If automatic sampling isn't working on your course today, it may improve in a future update without you having to do anything.

Getting started

Open a course builder in studio
Switch to the Elevations tab in the right-hand panel.
On Pro, click Sample terrain — the system pulls elevation data for the map area and renders contour lines.
On Club, or to refine the sampled surface, switch the floating toolbar at the bottom to Terrain mode and click on the canvas to drop a manual elevation point. Use Ctrl + scroll before placing to adjust the point's radius.

Manual elevation points

Each manual point is a delta — it adds (or subtracts) elevation from the surface beneath it, fading out smoothly to its edge. Two points placed next to each other don't stack: they stay at their own depths.

Select a point on the canvas to:

Use the small +/− pill above the marker to adjust the delta one metre at a time.
Drag the handle to resize its radius directly on the canvas.
Drag the dot to move it.
Right-click the dot for Duplicate point or Delete point.
Press Cmd/Ctrl + C then Cmd/Ctrl + V to copy and paste.

All edits use the standard undo/redo (Cmd/Ctrl + Z / Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Z).

Auto-filling a hole's elevation change

When you've sampled terrain (or dropped manual points covering tee + target), open a hole's Hole details panel. Below the Elevation Change field you'll see an Auto-fill from terrain button — it reads the elevation at the tee and target and writes the difference into the field. Works per layout too if you have layouts enabled.

Display settings

The Display section of the Elevations tab controls how the contour lines render:

Interval — vertical spacing between contour lines, in metres.
Peak line width — the width (on the ground) of the boldest ring on the map.
Progression strength — how strongly thin/faint rings stand out against bold ones.
Layer opacity — overall transparency of the contour overlay. Drop this to 0 to hide elevation without removing it.

Contours are also rendered automatically in public share URLs and caddie books — anyone viewing your course sees the same terrain you do.

What's in preview

This feature is new and intentionally lean. We're still figuring out:

How elevation data should flow into distance markers, stairs, and other height-aware objects.
Whether contours belong on more signage types or stay opt-in.
Whether per-signage local recalibration of the contour gradient helps or hurts readability.

If you have a course where this is (or isn't) working well, let us know — those examples are what we're tuning against.