Using Walls in the Cave

[cavescom]

On Dec. 13th we will be using the Mobile Demand very rugged tablet on a survey trip in Raders Valley http://www.ruggedtabletpc.com/ it is a bit heavy but other devices are coming on the market now that will change our options significantly for drawing on a PC in the cave utilizing Walls/Illustrator combo.

Mobile Demand Unit



Much more has been published here http://incavedigitalsurvey.com/board/Ya ... 1224130164 but I will paste some additional things below.

Here is The Panasonic Toughbook U1 only 2.3 pounds!

Front View



Head on View



Split Screen Mode View



Another device we picked up real cheap on ebay for entering the data real quick is a Sidearm 1(Note the Sidearm2 will be out soon http://www.novamobility.com )

The Sidearm 1 is a Windows CE device with long battery life and very rugged. Data for Walls is entered into Microsoft Word in the following format:
C13,C14,8.2,170/350.5,22/-23,<1 7 0 12>
which is then transferred to the PC and opened in Microsoft Excel with commas chosen as the delimiter. Once it is opened a simple copy/paste to get it into Walls and "compile"....export the SVG and begin drawing in Walls etc. We generally shoot 4-6 shots marking each clearly then transfer that data to the PC. The digital sketcher then has the job of drawing the passage/details for those 4-6 shots while the data crew continues to collect more data.

SideArm 1 Windows CE device - Rugged



Mark Passerby, IncaveDigitalsurvey.com

[Aaron Addison]

Great stuff Mark....

Are you using walls (or know anyone that is) for drawing profiles in the cave? Round tripping or otherwise? I've seen a lot on drawing plan views in the cave, but nothing on profiles.

ALSO.... Does anyone out there know how to get Walls to produce a vertical exgarrated profile? Say x5 or x10?

Cheers,

AA

[cavescom]

Profiles in Cave- No and to date I haven't even toyed with doing it.

Hopefully at some point if enough cavers have interest David will put the SVG option in for profiles.

Mark

[Spike]

The latest Walls manual says,

"Profile views currently can't be exported as SVG, a restriction that will soon be removed. One reason it exists now is that additional coding is required to insure that specific profile orientations are maintained in merge operations. Also, this capability will benefit from the implementation of vertical clipping planes, another planned feature. Without the latter, too many irrelevant vectors would likely project onto the plane of the profile, thereby complicating a feature adjustment."

The only way I can think of to get a vertical exaggerated profile would be to export a table with X, Y, and Z and then import the table into a spreadsheet and calculate an exaggerated Z. I think you may be able to add and manipulate the columns to place a #fix argument for each station and then copy this data into Walls. Walls should then be able to stretch each shot to match your fixed points and kick out a WMF of the exaggerated profile. I've never attempted to do this but I think it might work. Could be a fun way to try and blow up Walls.


Spike

[Jeff Bartlett]

For vertical exaggerations, just export a regular profile metafile (WMF) and then scale it disproportionately in Walls Illustrator (horizontal 100%, vertical 300%... that sort of thing). Then draw on the exaggerated scale. This would monkey with roundtrip functionality, of course, but since Walls doesn't SVG-roundtrip profiles it's a non-issue.

Drifing off-topic, I also wish Walls would do expanded profiles instead of just projected profiles. When I want to do an expanded profile of a particular section of cave, I basically have to create a dummy survey with all the clinometer information and distance information intact, but all azimuths set to zero, and then export a "projected" profile at 90 degrees.

(edit: typo of the year, I wrote "Walls" instead of "Illustrator" and can only hope Spike just wasted 5 min trying to figure out what planet I come from)

[Aaron Addison]

Hmmm... I like the way you think Spike...

Seems like there should be a way to place a vertical multiplier in a directive statement. I can do it in ArcGIS by calculating a new column value (similar to your spreadsheet thought). You could display it with a FLAG but that doesn't get you any closer to drawing a profile. Sigh...

Back to GIS alchemy,

Aaron

[Spike]

Or you could save yourself a lot of trouble and do it the way Jeff suggested. Ever get the feeling you've found a niffty way to do something only to discover you've done it the hard way. Now if I was adding a function to Walls for making an exagerated profile I would likely use the method I descibed.

[Aaron Addison]

Or you could save yourself a lot of trouble and do it the way Jeff suggested.

I would if I could. Unfortunately the two profiles that I need to draw don't lend themselves to that technique. One is in a paleo beach ridge in Mexico and very mazey, the other is a big joint controlled river passage with some serious doubling back.

your earlier post about David adding the clipping planes is key. Right now the only drafting software that can handle 3D clipping planes are the CAD packages.

Aaron