[Therion] Therion Digest, Vol 112, Issue 5

[Bruce]

As below.

>I've always like the idea of a "series" in bigger caves, i.e. a group of
related passages that help divide the cave into neighbourhoods. 

            Yes, we do that for larger caves.

 

>I pictured it as a bunch of building blocks (scraps and associated
centrelines) that I could put together hierarchically 

            I think it is.

 

>and that I could easy pass parameters from one level to the other or change
parameters of one branch or another. In Walls and On Station it was super
easy to change the colour of centreline for 2D or 3D display in a
hierarchical manner, just right click on the appropriate  survey or folder
(on Station) or Book (Walls). I used this a lot to visualize the cave. Eg
make all newly surveyed passage pink, colour code passage by survey date
[cannot], depth [can, for maps, not centreline]  etc. With my limited
understanding of Therion, I've not yet been able to do this. goes now it is
hard to subdivide parameters of a map. It seems like there should be some
commands for this. e.g. if survey = Arch then colour = blue, if team
includes "Rob Countess" then colour = yellow, if flag = lead then colour =
pink, if flag = drafting in then scrap/map = blue, elseif drafting out then
scrap/map = red, elseif oscillating then scrap = yellow, else if scrap =
black. Actually that last one would be a useful visualization, now I want to
do that. It should be easy to set labels to hide if font <7 pt, [can do this
but it is a hack]

            Mostly I would say these are very hard to do with Therion, if
not impossible (but I would very much like some of them).  Think of Therion
as 'still in development'. You might need to get into some serious coding.
I get around it in a very limited kind of way by using multiple output
formats at once.  ie maps and models in pdf, lox and 3d (survex viewer).

Therion output is produced by compiling what is effectively a batch of
files, so you have to expect that it won't have the immediacy of interactive
software.

 

 

>In answer to your "why not walls": Well i really like some features of
Walls. The blunder detection system is awesome. 

            From your description I can now see why not Walls.  However I
read about the blunder detection in Walls once, and was jealous.

 

>Plus I like being a gatekeeper for my projects. You get to stay up to date
and to on and to a degree direct  whats going on in your pet projects. When
I used On Station everybody knew how to use it. When I switched to walls
only a few people knew how to use it. 

            Ooh! A control freak. All the great 'sole owner' survey projects
in NZ stall eventually (20-30 yr timeframe) because of overload or lack of
succession planning.  The main reason I use something like Therion is that
it allows simultaneous drawing by many people.  Share the load!  If you use
version control, you can keep up with what others have done without
necessarily doing any of the work.

 

>So Therion is, so far, absolutely the least user friendly cave mapping
software around, 

            Probably true I am afraid, but I am sure that could be solved if
we get the right sort of instructions and examples.

 

Bruce

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.speleo.sk/pipermail/therion/attachments/20150427/9bb82f85/attachment.htm>