[therion] string list

Stacho Mudrak s.m at speleo.sk
Mon Jan 24 14:36:08 CET 2005


Eric Madelaine wrote:

> Yes Stacho, this can be a first useful approach.
> Of course there are many users of Vtopo in france (and more generaly in french) so this could be a large user community.


I have played a little bit with VTopo with following results:

1. VTopo has PLT export :) => even existing developement version is able to to import centerline data in this format.

2. Parsing VTOPO .tro files should not be difficult also - but not in next version.

In principle, both approaches are almost equivalent. User will have all stations imported to one survey.

> A (not very optimised, but nevertheless useful scenario) scenario could be: - use your Vtopo data to print a centerline + LRUD information, draw and   scan the onscale hand drawings (plan and extended elevation)


Very soon, we will add support for passage dimensions to be drawn automatically on the background (as a background image). This should enable user to draw maps directly on the screen without printing>hand-drawing>scanning.

> The fisrt limit to this approach is that Vtopo has no naming structure, so
> usually people get huge vtopo files with all surveyx of a given cave inside.

>

> At best they use the "merge" feature, when dealing with several caves in a given area (but the merge is based on entrance coordinates, and I've not found a way to twist this feature to deal with surveyx within a given cave, with potential joins inside).
>
> So you'll get a single big .th file, possibly with several survey sequence within (with diffrenet instruments settings and declination).
> No theoritcal problem there, just difficulties whne managing big dat sets.


Well, if they do not wish to convert centerline data (they will keep them in original format and therion will be able to import VTopo .tro files), huge files are not necessary.

In therion, you can input files without any survey command. And maps have also tree structure independent of surveys. Therefore you can have each piece of map in separate .th2 file and maps structure can be also divided into several .th files.

If they would like to convert centerline data to therion -> it would be better for them to create survey structure from the beginning. But I think, that new user will be afraid of converting his dataset to "unknown" and "complicated" software. Especially, if there will be import command and maps can be drawn directly without this conversion.

Regards, S.






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