A new version (20140412) of my Cave Converter tool is now available. It converts between various cave survey file formats. Enables users of DistoX devices to get their existing data into PocketTopo, and their new survey data out of PocketTopo and into Survex format. Plus enables migrating survey data from one program to another.

Help and the download link can be found on the Cave Converter home page. Source code is available under a GNU GPLv3 license.

A summary of the changes in this release:

- Adopted JScience.org libraries for handling measurements, and implemented length measurements 

  as unitised lengths rather than plain decimal values.

- Added support for reading Compass format survey data files.

- Added substitution of illegal characters in series and station names to Survex format output.

  Compass files allow various punctuation characters in series and station names, which are not

  allowed in Survex format data files. These will be substituted by an underscore character followed

  by a two letter code indicating the character which was substituted (e.g. '!' becomes '_ex').

- Added additional command line options: 

  - splays/nosplays: Survex writer and Toporobot writer now have option to not output splays.

  - lrud: Option to generate LRUD data from splays (can be used on any conversion).

- Added rounding of LRUD values to 2 decimal places in the Survex file writer.

- Changed LRUD generation to better select the best splay for each dimension, and to calculate 

  the distance for the LRUD dimensions based on the angle of the splay to the passage direction

  instead of using the total length of the splay. The splay selected when there is a choice is now

  the splay giving the biggest dimension in the direction of the LRUD measurement rather than using

  the splay closest to the compass bearing of the passage dimension measurement direction. Passage 

  direction is now calculated from the average bearing of the forward leg and the previous leg 

  arriving at the station. When more than two legs join at a station then the previous leg will be

  the one with the closest bearing to the bearing of the onward leg.

- Splays fired as back shots are now excluded from LRUD generation.

- Splays are no longer removed from the output when used to generate LRUD dimensions.

- The Survex writer now groups passage data from LRUD dimensions into blocks of readings corresponding

  to the survey legs in the file (previously one block of passage data was output per series with all

  stations listed with no respect for their connectivity).

- Added duplicate and surface flags to leg class, and added reading of flags to Survex parser and writing 

  them to Survex writer.

- Made the logging output less verbose, and fixed the survey summary details log output to include inner series.

Bugs fixed:

- Fixed case sensitivity bug in Toborobot file generation which left series unlinked if series or

  station names did not have identical case.

- Fixed bug in PocketTopo parser which repeated the station name given to the 'to' station for a splay

  leg when the splays were not all located together in the survey.

- Fixed bug where compass calibration was used instead of declination calibration in PocketTopo parser, 

  Survex parser and Survex writer.

- Added date reading to Survex parser.

- Fixed bug in utility function to calculate the average of a set of compass bearings (thanks to Peter Kellaway

  for pointing me to a much more robust and elegant solution). This bug does not affect the use of the function

  in previous versions (where it was only used to convert PocketTopo triple leg readings into one average leg)

  but it did show up in the new LRUD generation code when calculating the average bearing of two legs either

  side of a station when the passage went round a sharp bend.

- Fixed bug in Toporobot Writer which caused passage dimensions data to be output on the wrong station

  (LRUD values for the 'from' station of each leg were being put on the 'to' station of each leg).

- PocketTopo file reader no longer reorders the splay legs for each station (something which used to happen

  due to the old code which sorted splays into groups for L,R,U,D measurements in this reader).

Bug reports and requests to support other formats always welcomed.

Enjoy!

Footleg