Tarquin, David
The results of our little quiz made me uneasy, so I found an old test project that I believe is structured like Tarquin’s, a pattern I call ‘scrap and map definitions – inside trip file – inside survey’ SAMD-ITF-IS.
The outcome I feared (due to my large collection of projects structured differently) is that map-connections with multi-level offsets would work just fine with SAMD-ITF-IS.
That has not been the case, I have the same (I think) behaviour with this test project as I have with my other projects. So perhaps a degree of relief but still a mystery to resolve. With my test project:
I have not progressed this to a fourth level, brain is starting to hurt and I ran out of scraps associated with the particular sub-survey that I picked on.
Re-reading Tarquin’s last email mentioning sub-sub-sub-surveys, I wonder if we are at cross purposes a little (or Tarquin is using ‘survey’ loosely to refer also to maps). In my example below (which I think is structured like Tarquin’s) there are two surveys (1 and 2) and a parent cave survey that contains those two surveys, so only two levels of survey. However I have created three levels of map which offset correctly. When I create a fourth level of map in preparation for 3 levels of offset, the map-connection breaks.
The code examples below show only to the level 2 and level 3 offset maps, and these are the maps on the left hand side of the diagrams, as annotated.
Offset of offset is OK like this
map 1-BottomUpPlan-Bottom \
-projection plan
1-BottomUpPlan-s2
break
1-BottomUpPlan-s1 #bottom terminal chamber
endmap 1-BottomUpPlan-Bottom

Offset of offset is not OK when same as above but map-of-scraps is split into map-of-maps that references maps-of-scraps
##Setup for OffsetLevel 3
map 1-BottomUpPlan-Bottom \
-projection plan
1-BottomUpPlan-B2
# break
1-BottomUpPlan-B1
endmap 1-BottomUpPlan-Bottom
map 1-BottomUpPlan-B2 \
-projection plan
1-BottomUpPlan-s2
endmap 1-BottomUpPlan-B2
map 1-BottomUpPlan-B1 \
-projection plan
1-BottomUpPlan-s1 #bottom terminal chamber
endmap 1-BottomUpPlan-B1

Offset of offset of offset is OK BUT its parent is not (as above)
##Setup for OffsetLevel 3
map 1-BottomUpPlan-Bottom \
-projection plan
1-BottomUpPlan-B2
# break
1-BottomUpPlan-B1 [0 10] below #OffsetLevel 3
endmap 1-BottomUpPlan-Bottom
map 1-BottomUpPlan-B2 \
-projection plan
1-BottomUpPlan-s2
endmap 1-BottomUpPlan-B2
map 1-BottomUpPlan-B1 \
-projection plan
1-BottomUpPlan-s1 #bottom terminal chamber
endmap 1-BottomUpPlan-B1

For what it is worth, here is the overall survey file, consistent with my SAMD-ITF-IS pattern:
survey Cave
map CavePlan -projection plan
2-EntrancePlan@2
1-BottomUpPlan@1 [0 -20] below #OffsetLevel 1
endmap CavePlan
input 1-BottomUp.th
input 2-Entrance.th
centreline
equate 1.4@1 1.4@2
endcentreline
endsurvey Cave
So Tarquin, Can you pick any fundamnetal differences? Are we doing the same things? Are we talking about the same things?