- Therion - speleo.sk

Presentation
by Xavier Robert 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

Hi all, Trying to use Therion since some months, I subscribe to this mailing list, and thus present myself. I am a french caver from the Vulcain caving club in France (Lyon, http://www.groupe-speleo-vulcain.com/ ) and do lots of mapping since 5/6 years or so through our explorations in the Folly massif (Samoens, France, we are still working on the Jean Bernard system and Combe aux Puaires system), Ain department and in expeditions in Asia. I am currently trying to synthesize all the survey data from the Jean- Bernard and Combe aux Puaires system (something like 40 km today, data base with more than 400 karstic phenomena). All our data where papers, visual topo and illustrator files. But to permit evolution of the map after each new surveying, I remarked that it was not possible with vtopo/illustrator without redrawing each time new junctions are done. That's why I came to Therion. Just for information, I do not know if some of you are interested in, but to be able to use my vtopo files in Therion, I wrote a small buggy code in Fortran to produce .th and thconfig files from .tro files. I am not really an informatician, so the code is not clean. However, if some of you need it, ask me ! Now, you know me ! Cheers, Xav -- Xavier ROBERT CIFAR Junior Fellow GEOTOP, Département des Sciences de la Terre et de l'atmosphère Université du Quebec a Montréal CP 8888, Succursale centre-ville MONTREAL, Quebec H3C 3P8 (1-514) 987-3000 poste 3592 xavier.robert01(a)gmail.com http://www.geotop.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=861&Itemid=1… http://www2.cifar.ca/research/junior-academy/cifar-junior-fellows/?i=331 http://picasaweb.google.com/xavier.robert01

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Thanks Beat for the DistoX, PocketTopo
by Bruce 27 Jan '11

27 Jan '11

Firstly I'd like to thank Beat for; - developing the DistoX and for the regular improvements to PocketTopo, - repairing our DistoX when it was faulty after our initial assembly, and - 'walking' me through and troubleshooting on numerous times I've been confused or one of the devices was not working. We just found 2.5km of 10-30m diameter passage, and would not have been able to face surveying with a tape measure and paper (too slow and inaccurate). It's big muddy light absorbing passage. Having launched into the project I have a suggestion for PocketTopo development, (and distoX observations) that the forum might like to comment on. PocketTopo v1.35 It is a noticeable improvement on the previous versions, both on touch screen and 'non-touch screen machines. It most cases the popup menu allows you to select any survey leg and jump to the corresponding 'data, 'map', 'outline' drawing or 'side view' drawing. However, when you select a splay shot (un-numbered station) in either of the drawing views, this feature is not available. If it were, it would be very useful when trying to decipher the drawings and data table when the disto operator has got ahead of the booker. I understand the plan for Therion in future is to use splay shots identified by '-' for passage wall definition and splay shots identified by '.' for internal cave feature definition. It would be nice if PocketTopo implemented something similar as well. It would be easier to make this distinction as the survey was progressing in the cave, rather than making the adjustments back in the office. In addition if the '.' shots were a different colour to the survey legs with '-' shots it would ease the sketching process (or maybe allow a toggle between showing '-' shots and '.' shots). Disto Distance Our distoX occasionally gives one off spurious distance (and rarely compass) readings. On our most recent trip it went one step further - a ~15m survey leg gave '3 in a row' readings of 0.21m and some time later (after many readings that looked OK) on a similar ~15m survey leg it gave '8 in a row' 52.0m readings with the odd 48m and 82m reading thrown in for good measure. We chose another station and the anomaly disappeared. We are quite sure that for the majority of these bogus readings the laser was squarely on the target. This survey (but not these legs) included a 100m loop, which closed at 1.25%. This is among the worst we've had with the distoX, but it does not suggest any gross distance errors occurred within the loop. Some 100 distance readings later the lithium AAA batteries died. (The indicator suggested the batteries were full at the start, and the survey included probably 300 shots). Has any one else noticed similar issues? Are the spurious readings likely to be battery level related? Or do they suggest something more sinister? Disto Display A new distoX, recently acquired and upgraded by a colleague has developed some permanently 'lit' pixels (about 20 of them) in the middle of where the inclination is displayed - even when the device is powered off. He is a 'distoX & paper' surveyor (and like me has aging eyes) so the difficulty in reading the display is particularly frustrating. Is there a solution to this? - New display from Leica? - New circuit board from Leica? Happy caving Bruce

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Clino units
by Andrew Atkinson 27 Jan '11

27 Jan '11

As briefly mentioned in another email, we are surveying a cave with a total station, due to the amount of metal, making compasses useless. The total station gives its readings in degrees:minutes:seconds, which is fine for therion, but not so good for PocketTopo (or it might be my ignorance.) The problem encountered is it works on the units of zero as horizontal and works mathematically, so -10 in caver speak is 350 in total station. When this it put into therion (and by association I assume survex) you get an out of range error. gradient reading out of range -- 359 Okay I have solved this by converting all the down ones, but it would be good if Therion could use this convention. maybe generally giving a warning that can be suppressed for individual centrelines as a real icing feature? Andrew

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Every Survey with data has 2 centrelines?
by Andrew Atkinson 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

Hello I was just wondering if this is correct, but it would appear that when searching the database output all surveys contain at least 2 centreline ids Attached is the Forbidden.th file which has only one centreline/endcentreline pair, but the result below seems to show that there are 2 centreline id per survey when there is a centreline/endcentreline, of which one always have zero length. There is one id in files where there are no centreline/endcentreline, Eg CheddarCatchment which is the file that puts it all together, again this has zero length. This could be the way that it is designed, but it does seem to lead to lots of redundant data. Here is the search (I added the names in for ease of reference) SELECT C.`TITLE`, C.`ID`, C.SURVEY_ID, SURVEY.NAME, C.`SURFACE_LENGTH`, C.`LENGTH` FROM CENTRELINE C, SURVEY where SURVEY.ID=C.SURVEY_ID Limit 30 which gives this result (also attached as csv, as email can make a mess of tables) TITLE ID SURVEY_ID NAME SURFACE_LENGTH LENGTH 2 1 0 0 12 11 CheddarCatchment 0 0 14 13 Blackmoor 0 0 15 13 Blackmoor 0 105.3 18 17 BoneHole 0 0 20 19 BH_Surface 0 0 21 19 BH_Surface 13.49 0 22 19 BH_Surface 110.86 0 25 24 BH_Entrance 0 0 26 24 BH_Entrance 0 26.77 29 28 BH_FirstPitch 0 0 30 28 BH_FirstPitch 0 23.23 33 32 BH_PerforationChoke 0 0 34 32 BH_PerforationChoke 0 41.57 37 36 Bone2 0 0 38 36 Bone2 0 65.52 42 41 Box 0 0 43 41 Box 0 55.96 46 45 charter 0 0 48 47 OldCave 0 0 50 49 Chiaroscuro 0 0 180 49 Chiaroscuro 0 89.01 183 182 Entrance 0 0 616 182 Entrance 0 103.07 617 182 Entrance 0 281.2 620 619 Forbidden 0 0 720 619 Forbidden 0 36.84 723 722 Midsummer 0 0 812 722 Midsummer 0 31.38 815 814 ReadsInlet 0 0

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Database use
by Andrew Atkinson 11 Jan '11

11 Jan '11

Hello Well Bruce you spurred me into action, and I have produced some web pages, that allow users to search the database. It can be a little slow, especially the passage height query. Even the form is slow to load, and no indication is given that it is working. Finding the heights are quite quick it is the checking to see if they are underground that take the time, oh well probably can be optimised, but someone better than me. It is set up so that more searches can be easily added. Known problems Passage height gives meaningless results if one or both of the heights given are between the min and max. AJAX menu does not work on all browsers. Which brings me back to the where this all started, it would be more user-friendly to do searches on passage names as people call them. IE how long is 'Route 66' Currently to do this they would have to know that 'Route 66' was made up of the second half of Diesel Duck plus Onion and the first half of 'hall of time'. The first and last of these is not searchable? Have a look at http://wotcc.org.uk/Cheddar/ (the style is stolen from ubss.org.uk) If people think that it is useful, I'll add the code to the wiki, you should be able to edit the config file and it should then drop in to any site. Extra Searches can be added to the Searches Directory, so it should be adaptable. Works with mySQL. Andrew

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DistoX/2
by Martin Sluka 29 Dec '10

29 Dec '10

You may use the Stabila LE50 as well m.

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DistoX
by Martin Sluka 29 Dec '10

29 Dec '10

Originaly from Luc Le Blanc If you have a Disto A3 without the X module, this group order launched on a NSS forum (USA) may interest you: http://www.forums.caves.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=11155 Happy New Year!

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displaying models in a browser
by Graham Mullan 27 Dec '10

27 Dec '10

Someone on UKcaving asked about displaying 3d models on the web, as opposed to making them available as downloads. Andrew immediately suggested generating vrml files and I see that Therion "appears" to be able to generate these. However, I cannot find a Firefox plugin that will display these, or X3D files. Has anyone else thought about this issue? It would be good to be able to display and manipulate models directly in a browser window. Graham

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Diving data bug
by Graham Mullan 24 Dec '10

24 Dec '10

We have some diving data which, unusually, will be part of a closed loop. I therefore wished to put some parameters in to define the accuracy of that data. I put in some lines using the sd command and it accepted the "compass" parameters OK, but refuse the "fromdepth" and "todepth" ones despite those particular parameters appearing and being accepted by the data line. Any ideas? Graham

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Naming of passages
by Andrew Atkinson 20 Dec '10

20 Dec '10

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