3catcircus
11-23-2022, 10:26 AM
I've been playing with generating some ORBATs on what various units would look like in various times in history (2000 vs. present).
I've found two online tools, but neither of them really gets the job done.
www.orbatgenerator.com is nice for cleanly putting together small ORBATs, but it has a few limitations:
1. You can't free-edit the text inside each symbol and there may be icons that they don't have since it is only using MIL-STD-2525D. For example - I don't see any way of generating an icon for the Security Force Assistance Command or its constituent brigades.
2. Going more than three levels deep doesn't work since you can't array the units horizontally, only vertically.
3. The text can bunch up if you don't abbreviate.
4. You can't properly format data (for example, 5th ID would show "5" on bottom left outside the symbol and "NORTHAG" on the bottom right of the symbol if you were looking at 5th ID in a v1 timeline, but this tool can't do that)
www.spatialillusions.com has a nice unit symbol generator that is compliant with both -2525D and APP-6D (as well as older -2525C and APP-6) but it only generates the symbols themselves. They're properly formatted symbols, but you can't change the filled color to reflect branch (e.g. yellow for Cavalry, green for Infantry, etc.) , and it only generates the unit symbols - not the organization of all of the sub units.
Samples of each type are shown below - first is from orbatgenerator; second is from spatial illusions.
What do you all use to create ORBATs graphically (or do you)?
I've found two online tools, but neither of them really gets the job done.
www.orbatgenerator.com is nice for cleanly putting together small ORBATs, but it has a few limitations:
1. You can't free-edit the text inside each symbol and there may be icons that they don't have since it is only using MIL-STD-2525D. For example - I don't see any way of generating an icon for the Security Force Assistance Command or its constituent brigades.
2. Going more than three levels deep doesn't work since you can't array the units horizontally, only vertically.
3. The text can bunch up if you don't abbreviate.
4. You can't properly format data (for example, 5th ID would show "5" on bottom left outside the symbol and "NORTHAG" on the bottom right of the symbol if you were looking at 5th ID in a v1 timeline, but this tool can't do that)
www.spatialillusions.com has a nice unit symbol generator that is compliant with both -2525D and APP-6D (as well as older -2525C and APP-6) but it only generates the symbols themselves. They're properly formatted symbols, but you can't change the filled color to reflect branch (e.g. yellow for Cavalry, green for Infantry, etc.) , and it only generates the unit symbols - not the organization of all of the sub units.
Samples of each type are shown below - first is from orbatgenerator; second is from spatial illusions.
What do you all use to create ORBATs graphically (or do you)?