November 2009 - Therion

DistoX and PocketTopo with Therion
by Bruce Mutton 13 Apr '10

13 Apr '10

Hi there I have a Disto arriving hopefully in a few days, and looking ahead I've been tentatively trialling PocketTopo on my PC. I suspect therein lies my first problem. Perhaps it only has limited functionality on PC's? I can manually enter data, but I can not seem to draw passage outline. The Export Therion format does not seem to produce data in a format similar to what Therion normally accepts - after the data it produces some form of co-ords separated into plan and elevation partitions. Most of the survey stations are converted to 10 digit numbers and all of the keywords are in capitals. Much of the file content could be made Therion compatible relatively easily using a text editor, but surely this is not what is intended? Obviously there is something significant here that I am missing. Have searched about but have not found the solution yet. Does anyone have a small dataset that demonstrates the interaction between PocketTopo and Therion? Bruce

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Explored always zero in continuation list
by Bruce 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

Have just noticed that 'explored lengths' are always reported as zero in continuation-list, They are correctly reported in caves-list and surveys-list. Bruce

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Increasing Metapost 4096 scrap limit
by Carl Magnuson 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

I am getting close to the limit of 4096 scraps for Metapost which is mentioned in the Therion book and I have ran into it in some cases. It looks like this is a setting in Metapost that must be changed and not Therion, but I was hoping maybe others had ran into this and knew what modifications are needed to Metapost to accept more scraps. Thanks, Carl

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-station-names prefix suffix disable
by Bruce 24 Nov '09

24 Nov '09

Hi Is it possible to use -station-names <prefix> <suffix> within a scrap definition, and then disable it for only one or two stations that need to have a different prefix (connecting to a different survey). I have tried using a group endgroup block within the scrap, but get therion.exe: error -- PP-ParaphantaShaftPlan.th2 [248] -- unknown command - group Bruce

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Shane Fryer/SEKI/NPS is out of the office.
by Shane_Fryer＠nps.gov 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

I will be out of the office starting 11/20/2009 and will not return until 12/19/2009. I will respond to your message when I return.

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Re: [Therion] Incorrectly Drawn Scraps
by Martin Sluka 20 Nov '09

20 Nov '09

Problem from Carl: Posted here http://mbug.dyndns.org/example/ are two thconfig files, one with the scraps and one without and the generated PDF files. The shot B009-B010 for example looks fine in the just centerline export, but does not show up on the export from scraps (even though it has a scrap which looks correct). Analysis from Stacho: All scraps has identical coordinates of stations and in several cases neighboring scraps has identical distance between walls. Therion has one hidden feature - it tries to join scraps automatically if there is no command "join". And in some conditions the result is as in your example. Therion "thought" two neighboring scraps are of one passage. Stacho wrote me the shift of coordinates: for example 0-100, 1-101, 2-102 should help. The problem at the end is in Carl data. (comment m.s.) :) A note: Don't use visibility on/off but subtype invisible subtype bedrock You may not use smooth off when there is no one bezier curve in your data. Correct data: scrap example-11-18-th2 point 0 0 station -name B007 point 100 0 station -name B009 line wall -outline out -attr color "color col; col:=(.5,0,0);" 100 4.62962962962963 0 4.62962962962963 subtype invisible 0 -4.62962962962963 subtype bedrock 100 -4.62962962962963 endline endscrap scrap example-11-19-th2 point 1 0 station -name B009 point 101 0 station -name B010 line wall -outline out -attr color "color col; col:=(.5,0,0);" 101 4.62962962962963 1 4.62962962962963 subtype invisible 1 -4.62962962962963 subtype bedrock 101 -4.62962962962963 endline endscrap Several pictures illustrated the problem:

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Version Control Systems and Therion
by Bruce 17 Nov '09

17 Nov '09

Eighteen months ago there was some discussion about VCS that people were using with Therion. We have two largish projects and soon to be three people working on their own copies of the files that every now and again I try to merge into a coherent dataset. I suspect it's well passed the time where we should have been using a VCS, but you know how it is. Sometimes it seems easier to run along pushing a bicycle than it is to take the time to choose an appropriate one, and hen learn to ride it. A few VCS options were mentioned, including bazaar http://bazaar-vcs.org/en/ and subversion http://subversion.tigris.org/ In an effort to get more local people involved and ease the learning curve for Therion newcomers I'm thinking that putting all our data on a web page and allowing those working on it to have ftp access. Bearing in mind that I have no experience with any type of automated version control (am downloading bazaar as I write this) is there any advice out there? Best VCS application to use? Are ease of use for learner computer users, ftp, Therion and VCS mutually exclusive? My (sheltered) experience with ftp so far is that it is no more complex than using files on a local disk. Is this a good route or should I try another path? Any feedback or advice welcomed. Cheers Bruce

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Length Units Mile(s)
by Carl Magnuson 16 Nov '09

16 Nov '09

Would it be possible to add a mile(s) distance unit? My big map is getting close to 3 miles and it would be nice to have the total distance in the legend be in miles. I do all my measurements in meters but use feet on the maps, still haven't completely adopted the metric system! Carl

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2D Output Scale Dependant Error -- metapost exit code -- 3
by Bruce 13 Nov '09

13 Nov '09

Hi Wonder if anyone knows what might be going on here? The attached log file was more than 6MB and 135,000 lines and I have trimmed out most of the offending error reporting (which were I think was pretty much identical) Have only recently noticed this problem, so may be related to changes in the last few Therion updates. Many of my datasets have not changed for some months. My pdf map will create OK at scales of 1:500, 1:1000, 1:2000, 1:4000, but not 1:4500 (gives a single error as attached) nor 1:5000 to 1:6000 (gives many thousands of errors, 6MB and 13MB respectively). Interestingly 1:7500, 1:9000, 1:10,000 and 1:20,000 compile OK. The pattern seems to hold for low level cave maps as well as for maps of collections of caves. This is particularly a problem for distributed systems where I get squeezed between the 5.5m pdf size limit and the above scale limit, but don't want to go to the much larger scale. (I could try using atlas base scale, but I've had enough experimentation for now). Regards Bruce

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Missing mingwm10.dll file
by Bruce 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

Last week I tried to install Therion on Windows XP and Windows Vista OS machines and each time I tried to run Loch I got an error regarding a missing file, mingwm10.dll Problem was present with 5.2, 5.2.10 and 5.2.12 I eventually had success with 5.2.9 Is this file missing from the former install files or was I doing something wrong? A little perplexing as I have never had this problem on my own XP machine, on which I have successively installed the most recent versions over top of the old versions since about 0.5.1.? Regards Bruce

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