Forced design Choices in Architect?

[stillgolfing]

On some courses I see some design choices that are unrealistic or just don't suite my eye. Since I am not familiar with the Course Architect, I am not able to determine if these issues are forced on the designer by the idiosyncratic nature of the Course Architect (I'm assuming here that the Architect is as idiosyncratic as PGA 2000 itself) or, due to rendering complexity and program issues, it is just much more convenient and practical for the designer to follow a certain pre ordained visual route.

Knowing the issues associated with certain design choices would help me be more consistant in evaluating the courses I am playing.
The two main things that bug me, which I see on many courses are:

1) The "burled walnut" frame that defines the bunkers on many courses
2) Overly numerous white O/B stakes surrounding hazards that in real life would be red staked.

Any clarification regarding these course design features would be appreciated.
Cheers, Dave

[SteveHorn]

Dave! "Burled walnut frame" not sure what you mean by that except maybe all the bunkers are simple ovals that are dug out some. If thats the case then thats the designers fault. Its ok to have a few like that but the whole course NO. Stakes are a low priorty and it may be a designer just accidently put the wrong ones up or didn't have a library where he could find the correct color with the libraries he has already chosen. That being said I believe one of the stock libraries may have both stakes avalible. Some courses are meant to look or fill a little different to ad varity to the game and make a course a little less cookie cutter in design.

[Indy Anna Jones]

Stakes are a designer's choice; AFAIK there's only one red "stake"; that's in the Princeville lib and it looks more like a pipe with a little 90 degree bend at the top than a stake.

As far as that "buried walnut frame", what comes to my mind's eye is the brown edge between the sand and the grass. Forgive me if I'm not seeing this correctly. If that's the case, then that's the designer's effort to make it look like a bit of dirt at the top of the trap and a boundary between the trap and the grass. I think I've always used that in my courses because as the grass is usually at the same (or very slightly higher) elevation, it looks like the sand is running into the grass. Because of the idiosyncrasies of the designer, and the fact that the trap itself takes up an awful lot of points, it's almost impossible to make a grassy "lip."

Hope that answers your question.

[stillgolfing]

Hi Judy;
Great to here you are back playing and hear in the forum. Thanks for the info. When I get a moment I will do some screen shots of some examples (maybe call them the good the bad and the ugly). However, I'm currently busy troubleshooting the PGA2000 install on my new Laptop. No luck so far, but I'm not panicking as I recently refurbished my old XP desktop PC in order to continue playing and using those games that won't install or run in Win8.1. Plan is to take it offline on Tuesday when XP update support ends.
Cheers, Dave