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Classes and courses ​

Audience: Event organisers defining the competition structure.

Classes are the categories competitors enter (e.g. M21A, W14, Open Moderate). Courses are the physical sequences of controls. Classes determine who runs against whom; courses determine what they run.

This page covers what they are, how they're related, and how to create, edit, and delete them in Manager. Most events get their classes and courses from an import — see Importing event data — so usually you're reviewing and adjusting rather than entering from scratch.

How classes and courses relate ​

A class can be assigned one or more courses, and a course can be assigned to one or more classes — the relationship is many-to-many. In practice you'll see two common patterns:

  • One course per class — typical of championship classes (M21A → "Hard 1" course).
  • Multiple classes sharing one course — typical of age-group classes that all run the same physical course (M21A and W21A both run "Hard 1"). Each class still appears separately on Leaderboard.

Manager doesn't require every class to have a course assigned during setup, but a class without a course can't produce results. The Classes page flags missing assignments so you can spot them at a glance.

The Classes page ​

Navigate to Classes in the Event Data section of the side menu.

The table shows one row per class with these columns (some appear conditionally):

  • Class — the class name. Click to open the edit dialog.
  • Mass Start — the class's mass-start time, if set. Only shown if the event or any class uses a mass start.
  • Courses — the courses assigned to this class.
  • Radio Controls (including priority) — which radio controls report for this class. For relay classes the list is grouped by leg.
  • Competitors — entry count. Only shown if the event is not a relay.
  • Teams — team count. Only shown if the event is a relay.
  • On Course — how many competitors in this class are still On Course (started but not finished).

Filter the table with Search by class name or by Radio control code.

The Actions menu (top right) has:

The Courses page ​

Navigate to Courses in the Event Data section.

The table shows one row per course:

  • Course — the course name. Click to open the edit dialog.
  • Controls — the ordered sequence of control codes. A red warning appears if a course has no controls.
  • Length — the course length in km. Click to open a per-leg breakdown. Normally measured automatically as the sum of the leg distances (shows -- if any leg distance is unknown); a ruler icon marks a course whose length has been set manually instead.
  • Assigned Classes — count of classes that use this course. Click to see the list.

Filter with Search by course name or by Control code.

The Actions menu has:

  • Import — open the Import Data dialog.
  • Add — create a new course.
  • Assign to Classes — bulk-assign courses to classes (same dialog as on the Classes page).
  • Leg distances — open the shared leg-distances editor (see Leg distances below).

Creating a class by hand ​

Click Actions → Add on the Classes page. The Edit Class dialog opens.

Fields:

  • Class ID — auto-assigned; read-only.
  • Class Name — required. The name shown everywhere (Leaderboard, start lists, results).
  • Short Name — optional. A shorter label used where space is tight.
  • Courses — multi-select chips. Pick one or more courses for this class, or leave empty and assign later.

Start time section:

  • Class mass start — toggle on if this class starts together at a fixed time. When on, set Class Mass Start Time (defaults to 10:00:00 the first time you enable it).
  • Exclude this class from event mass start — appears only when the event has a mass start and this class doesn't have its own class mass start. Tick it if this class should start individually despite the event-wide mass start.

Click Save.

Creating a course by hand ​

Click Actions → Add on the Courses page. The Edit Course dialog opens with three tabs.

Details ​

  • Course ID — auto-assigned; read-only.
  • Course Name — required.
  • Course Information — optional free-text notes (course-setter notes, terrain notes, etc.).
  • Start — which Start this course uses. An event can have several Starts (e.g. "Main Start", "Easy Courses Start") at different locations; pick the one this course uses.
  • Finish — which Finish control this course chains through, chosen the same way.
  • Controls — the ordered sequence of middle controls between the Start and the Finish.

To build the control sequence, type a control code (31–511) into the input and press Enter. Each control appears as a chip in the order added. Drag chips to reorder. Click the close icon on a chip to remove it, or press Backspace to delete the last one.

Note: The Start and Finish are picked from the event's Start and Finish controls in the dropdowns above — the Controls field holds only the middle controls between them. An event can define multiple Start and Finish controls; see Controls and radio controls.

Climb ​

  • Total climb — total elevation gain over the whole course, in meters.

Length ​

Choose how this course's length is worked out:

  • Measured automatically — the length is the sum of the course's leg distances (the default), shown beside the option.
  • Manually calculated — enter the length in metres yourself. Use this for sprint courses, where the published length is the shortest sensible route around obstacles rather than the straight-line geometry, or whenever you need a deliberate figure (taped routes, remeasurement). A manual length must be a whole number of metres greater than zero. The value you set here is what Manager publishes to exports (Eventor / IOF XML) and printed split-time receipts, in place of the measured sum.

Below the length options is a read-only breakdown of the distance between each consecutive pair of controls on this course. Leg distances are shared across the whole event, keyed by the two controls' identities — if two courses both go from control 31 → 32 the same distance applies, but a leg from "Start 1 → 131" stays distinct from "Start 2 → 131". Edit them via Actions → Leg distances on the Courses or Controls page.

If the course has no controls yet, the breakdown tells you to add them on Details first.

Click Save.

Assigning courses to classes ​

Often you don't need to assign anything by hand: an imported course file that includes class-course assignments (ClassCourseAssignment entries — exported by Purple Pen, OCAD and others) sets each named class's courses automatically during the import, even when the course names ("Course 1") don't match the class names ("M21E"). After a course import, the bulk dialog below opens automatically only if at least one class is still without a course.

When you do need to assign manually, there are two ways:

  • One class at a time — open the class's edit dialog and pick courses in the Courses field.
  • Bulk — use Assign Courses (on the Classes page) or Assign to Classes (on the Courses page). Both open the same dialog.

In the bulk dialog you see one row per class with a multi-select for its assigned courses. Edit any row, then click Save — only the changed rows are written, and a counter at the bottom shows how many.

Auto-assign (top of the dialog) matches each class to a course by name and fills in the suggestions. After auto-assign, an alert tells you how many classes matched and how many didn't — review the highlighted rows, edit anything that's wrong, then Save. Useful right after an import that brought in classes and courses with matching names.

Relay events ​

For relay events, the course list still holds the physical courses (one per leg variant), but leg structure — which leg punches which radio control — is configured on the class via its Radio Controls, not on the course. The course is just an ordered list of controls; the class decides how those controls are grouped by leg.

See Relay events for the full picture.

Leg distances ​

Leg distances are kept in one shared bank for the event, keyed by the identity of the from-control and to-control (not by control code). This means editing the distance for 31 → 32 once updates every course that traverses that leg — while a leg from "Start 1 → 131" stays distinct from "Start 2 → 131", since the event can have more than one Start. Editing the middle of a course leaves the surviving legs untouched.

Open the editor from Actions → Leg distances on either the Courses or Controls page. The same dialog is reachable from inside the Edit Course dialog as a read-only Leg distances tab.

Editing after the event has started ​

Classes and courses remain fully editable after the event has gone live — Manager doesn't lock them down. This is intentional: late entries land in classes, and you sometimes need to fix a wrongly-set control sequence mid-event.

That said, a few changes will affect already-finished competitors:

  • Adding, removing, or reordering controls on a course will re-classify every competitor on that course (anyone who matched the old course may now be Mispunched, and vice versa).
  • Removing a course from a class unassigns it for everyone in that class.
  • Renaming a class or course is safe — it's just a label change.

If you must edit a course after competitors have started, do it during a quiet moment and check the Results page afterwards.

Deleting classes and courses ​

To delete a class, open its edit dialog and click the red Delete button at the bottom-left. Confirm the prompt.

Deleting a course is the same — open it, click Delete, confirm. If the course is assigned to any classes, Manager unassigns it from them automatically.

Deletion is permanent. There's no undo.

Course pools and locking a competitor to a course ​

A class can hold more than one course — a course pool. This is common where a class is split across forked courses, or where several map variants share a class. When a competitor's card is downloaded, Manager checks it against every course in the class's pool and records the one that produced the best result.

Some events allow any course for any competitor in a class, whereas some events lock a competitor to a specific course. Only the course locked to a specific competitor is checked against the competitors download.

To lock a competitor to a course:

  1. Open the competitor in the Competitors list.
  2. On the Details tab, use the Course picker (shown only when the competitor's class has a pool of two or more courses).
  3. Choose the course to lock them to, or leave it on Any in the course pool to let Manager pick the best match automatically.

When a course is locked:

  • The competitor download is checked against only that course. If their punches don't match it, they get a Missing Punch (or DNF) against the locked course — Manager will not quietly move them to a different course in the pool.
  • The lock is durable: it survives re-downloads, course edits, and class edits. (If you move the competitor to a class whose pool doesn't contain the locked course, the lock is cleared automatically.)
  • When the lock is left on Any, the course the automatic evaluation actually chose is shown read-only as the Course on the competitor's Result tab, so you can see which course produced their result.

Course locks can also be applied in bulk by importing an IOF course file that contains per-competitor course assignments.