Round Tripping with Compass

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Round Tripping with Compass

Postby Extremeophile » Feb 5, 2011 12:22 am

I was curious if others have been using Compass for round tripping since the release last March. I love the SVGexporter tool, but I only recently tried using it to Merge/Morph (aka round trip) a map I'm working on in Illustrator. My Illustrator file is naturally a .ai format file. I save it as a .svg but then get an error when I try to bring it into the SVGexporter program for the merge/morph process. I'm using Illustrator CS, so I don't think there are any issues with layers vs groups, and I believe I've maintained the correct layer structure.

Anyone have any experience doing this... positive or negative?

I don't have a good sense for how many people use round tripping with Illustrator. Is it 3, 30, 300 :shrug:

Derek
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Re: Round Tripping with Compass

Postby Stan Allison » Feb 5, 2011 2:56 pm

Hi Derek,

Since 2005 I have been using Illustrator and Walls to roundtrip cave maps. Prior to 2005, I only used Compass and I learned how to use Walls specifically so that I could roundtrip cave maps with Illustrator. Currently I am drafting a 14 mile long cave an 11 mile long cave and a 2 mile long cave by roundtripping with Walls/Illustrator. All of these caves are still actively being surveyed and all of them are quite mazy (the 11 mile cave has 241 loops). It is great for me to be able to add new surveys to the map and not have to worry about the map not matching the updated lineplot as surveys are closed. I really think that roundtripping is the way to go for any multi-mile cave projects that are being drafted as the survey progresses and especially those caves that have numerous loops. For small caves or linear caves there seems to be less of an advantage, but I still like SVG exports for drafting caves that I don't plan to roundtrip.

I still use Compass to enter survey data because I prefer the Compass data entry editor and then I convert the data to Walls for roundtripping. I have used the Compass SVG exporter to export an SVG profile for one of the above caves, but I haven't tried roundtripping in Compass. Walls doesn't allow the export of SVG profiles.

Once you get roundtripping figured out in Compass, I would be interested in talking with you in more detail about that process.

As for others out there roundtripping, I know that Mark Passerby is using roundtripping for some multi-mile cave projects out east. Reading about his work is what turned me on to roundtripping. I'm pretty sure that Jeff Bartlett is roundtripping maps that he is working on in Lechuguilla Cave and Mammoth Cave using Walls and Illustrator. David McKenzie who created Walls, used the process to roundtrip a map of a mazy cave in the Yucatan, Actun Kua which is included as an example in Walls. I'm not sure who else out there is roundtripping.

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Re: Round Tripping with Compass

Postby Extremeophile » Feb 6, 2011 1:25 am

So I guess there are more than 3 people doing this, but maybe not much more. It's complicated enough that if you learned to do it in Walls it probably makes sense to stay with what works. I was using Walls a year ago, partly because it was free, partly because I find it easier to enter data in Excel and then export to Walls, and partly because I had intentions of round tripping. I much prefer the data entry interface in Compass and like the SVG exporting program. The Compass round tripping functionality looks very simple and straightforward, but I was getting an error pretty early in the merging/morphing process. Larry has my data and is trying to find a fix. I'd say there's a good liklihood I deleted something critical to the process while working in Illustrator. I'll update the forum once it gets figured out.
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Re: Round Tripping with Compass

Postby Spike » Feb 6, 2011 8:42 pm

Jeff is Roundtripping 2 sheets at Mammoth. I'm roundtripping one at Mammoth and a couple caves here in Missouri. Jeff and I are both using Walls with Illustrator. I'm using Illustrator 10, because it works and it was a gift. Jeff is using CS whatever is current. I'd be curious to here how roundtripping with Compass works and any pros or cons vs. Walls. I don't mind the Walls data entry interface and prefer the stats and math behind Walls, but if Compass can export a profile SVG, it may be worth the effort to export data from Walls to Compass. Dave is working on 3D clipping for Walls and SVG, so profile is in the future for Walls. At any rate Good Luck.
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