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 three 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).
Flat areas — outline an area and level it to one height, so obviously flat ground (a parking lot, a building pad) stops showing contour lines running across it.

What you get per plan

Free / Hobby — a one-time Preview elevation on each course: sample real terrain once and see the contours in the editor, so you can tell whether automatic elevation is worth upgrading for. The preview is view-only — it stays in the editor and isn't included in share pages, caddie books, or exports.
Club — manual elevation points (contours render around the points you drop), plus the same one-time automatic Preview elevation. No repeat automatic sampling.
Pro — adds full Sample terrain: pull real elevation data for the map area in one click, re-sample whenever your map area changes, layer manual points and flat areas on top, and include terrain in share pages, caddie books, and exports.

Preview is a look, not the feature. A preview is a single view-only sample so you can see how automatic elevation looks on your own course. Re-sampling, manual fine-tuning of the sampled surface, auto-filling hole elevation from it, and showing terrain publicly all require Pro.

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.
Below Pro, click Preview elevation to sample real terrain once and see the contours in the editor. To keep re-sampling, refining, and exporting terrain, upgrade to Pro from the prompt that appears.
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:

Adjust its height a metre at a time with the +/− stepper in the callout at the top of the canvas.
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).

Flat areas

Real courses have ground that is simply flat — parking lots, buildings, greens — and elevation data often draws contours across it anyway. A flat area levels everything inside a drawn outline to a single height:

Switch the floating toolbar to Terrain mode and choose Add flat area.
Click the map to outline the area — each click adds a corner.
Press Enter (or the Finish button) to level it. The height defaults to the average terrain inside the outline, so one action is usually enough.

Contour lines inside the area disappear, and the edge blends smoothly back into the surrounding terrain over an adjustable edge blend distance instead of forming a cliff.

Select a flat area on the canvas to:

Drag its corner handles to reshape the outline, or add more corners with Add points.
Use the Raise / lower stepper in the callout at the top of the canvas to cut or fill the area a metre at a time, relative to the natural terrain around it.
Drag the round handle just outside the area to set the edge blend — the shaded band shows exactly how far the transition reaches. Dragging it back onto the outline gives a hard edge.
Right-click it to Delete Flat Area.

Both numbers are also in the Objects tab on the right, which opens automatically when you select an area, if you'd rather type than drag.

Nothing is drawn on top of the area itself, so the contours you're flattening stay visible while you adjust them.

Inside a flat area, flat wins: manual elevation points overlapping the area don't poke through. Flat areas survive terrain re-sampling, follow the standard undo/redo, carry over when a course is copied, and render in share pages, caddie books, and exports just like the rest of your terrain.

Flat areas work on sampled terrain — they take away contour lines the elevation data drew — so they're part of Pro, alongside automatic sampling. On Club there's no sampled surface for them to level.

Auto-filling a hole's elevation change

When you've sampled terrain on Pro (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. A one-time preview doesn't feed auto-fill — it's view-only.

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.

Sampled (Pro) terrain and manual points are also rendered automatically in public share URLs and caddie books — anyone viewing your course sees the same terrain you do. A one-time preview is the exception: it stays in the editor and is never shown publicly or in exports.

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.