C#*?@19 Tutorial: How to Draw Winnatts at home

alastairgott

Well-known member
Well Covid has put a complete halt to any idea of teaching the masses of SUSS how to survey in the next couple of months, not least cos I haven't seen many of them recently.


Well SUSS, sorry there's no escape, here comes a lesson in learning Therion.


Firstly, the two things you will need.
1) Download Therion: https://therion.speleo.sk/download.php
2) Download Sumatra PDF: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/download-free-pdf-viewer.html


First Hurdle, why do I need a new PDF reader?
In short, you don't but you will be regenerating a PDF a lot while you're fine tuning your visuals. PDF's are viewed by most PDF viewers as being unchangeable documents.
Sumatra works differently if you overwrite a pdf document it just doesn't care and will regenerate it live, however other PDF viewers will lock out any new changes by keeping the document locked from being overwritten.


We will concentrate on the section beyond the sewer first. This will need entering into the viewing pane, the easiest thing I can do is to create a file just to get you started...


I've cheated a bit, so hope Q/Peg/Badlad don't find out... WinnatsBeyond.zip.pdf is actually a .zip file not a pdf, so download it and remove the .pdf bit of the filename and then unzip the file, hopefully the three files you will need should be there.


If you immediately open the file "Winbeysewer.thconfig" this should open up therion, and you should be able to click the Gear button, and it will generate the PDF below, clearly there is work to do!


Next "lesson" will be drawing walls and joining them.
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
Sorry moved the original .jpg before posting, so it got a little lost!


A work of art by itself, by Wardy&co :bow:
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
Yeh, we'll all go insane if there's no idiot posting random instructions on the internet, I'm going to keep two threads active. One for discussion https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=26206.new#new

And this one for instructing, so be great if you could prompt me for more on the linked thread: https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=26206.new#new
 

SamT

Moderator
Alistair, I have half the job already done.  I need to share the files with you.  Whats the best way. Dropbox, google file stream??
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
yeh any of the above. i'm my name as it is on here


[at]hotmail.com


In the meantime, SUSS if you're out there, it would be great if I could get one or two of you following this :)
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
Lesson 2: Walls and Scraps.

We won't worry about how to define walls in a cave, in our example of Winnatts head, we've only got the outer edge of the cave to worry about.


Walls are drawn anti-clockwise around the outer edge of the cave.


So you may be wondering "why", as I don't have to do that if i'm drawing in MSpaint.
The reason is twofold, firstly the software is going to use the survey data and contort what you've drawn to make it fit the data, therefore that outer edge is crucial.
secondly, you may be drawing a maze system, in which case the difference between passage and rock is really difficult to define- unless you have the convention of drawing walls in an anti clockwise manner.


To start with, we will concentrate on the end of the cave, The first thing i'd like you to do is use the select tool [1] to select the upper line [2] (pictures below), now click on the line tool [3], the line tool allows you to draw a new line, there are two options a straight line can be achieved with a single click where you want to drop the point.
Or a Bezel curve can be used by clicking and dragging the point.


I have made two pictures of the two different ways of drawing walls, one for the straight line method which looks shoddy! and the other using the Bezel curve.
A point of Note here, the yellow "tick" should always be inside the passage, it will be if you've drawn walls anticlockwise, but not if you haven't.


The clicking and Dragging to make the Bezer Curve should then be repeated till you get to the bottom line where you can single click the final point


SCRAPS
Scraps are a terminology used by therion boffins to confuse people, they should be thought of more as passage which needs to be drawn separately.
Much like how I talked about maze caves earlier, if you then had a passage passing underneath the section of maze passage, then not only would we get confused as to what we were drawing, but the software would also get confused.


So at this point we need to think like a therion boffin, it is our choice where we decide scraps are going to be before we put them into therion, convention states at any significant change in altitude. So for now we'll go with that.


For ease, I've got you started with three different scrap areas, one the end of the cave, one for the start of the down pitches and one for the upsection after the sewer. The naming convention for these is the name of the area [Beysewer] and then followed by something to make it unique. In this case, we want to ensure it's defined as a scrap and then something so we know its in Plan view and followed by a Number for example 2 in the picture. So we combine these to call it [BeysewerSP2].


If you want to work on a different scrap, it is important to use the select tool and select one of the existing walls or lines within that scrap, this is so you know you're drawing in the correct section of the cave.


Joining Scraps
at the joining of the scraps, you will see that I've purposely hooked the walls on one side on the passage, this is so that you need to do something to get them to join, but don't need to worry about scraps at the start.


If you use the select tool and click one of the hooked walls, then you will be able to edit it, and bring it into join the end of the grey wall which is from the other scrap.


I've done a perfect join and a halfarsed join, Therion does cope with halfarsing a job, but it sometimes causes problems as the software tries to correct for the mistake.


At this point we can hit the Gear button and see what we've got, I have run a special additional script in mine to show how therion is coping with the halfarsed join.
As it is I have not given mine a lot to go off for the walls, so it's got some big corrections in there, but these should hopefully be ironed out with some more walls.


The next lesson will be areas and borders, and will concentrate on the area around the sewer or [BeysewerSP1], so get your walls drawn in around there.
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
At present, when you've got all the walls in, you will see significant distortion at the end of the cave. please ignore this for now, get the walls in, and we'll move onto areas in a bit.
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
Lesson 3: Areas.



So cave surveys look boring and are largely pointless without stuff in them. there are three ways in which you can add "stuff" to cave surveys. using the point tool, using the line tool or using the area tool.


The great thing about the area tool is it's a great way of getting a good looking survey done fast, the drawback is that it takes longer for the survey to be turned into a PDF doc, each time you run the survey it will work out how best to fill the area you've put in, even if you've run the survey before.
So in general terms the order you should use the tools is Point, then Line and then Area, so I you've got some flowstone, it might be best to use point flowstone rather than line or area.


Anyway I digress and confuse.


So we've been working exclusively with the Line tool so far, but there are other types of lines we can use, for now we will use line border, so select the line tool and change the type to be "border". Then draw the area you want, I have drawn a box around the area of passage which contains the sewer (again Anticlockwise drawing please).


Ensure the line is joined up. now you have one line which defines the border, we need to now fill it with something...


This is where the area tool comes in, select the area tool, by default it will come up with the last thing you've used, in our case it comes up with the default of Water. by now clicking on the border we just made, we are defining the area of water to be inside the border we just made.
be careful with this, as altering the line border in any way will change the ID which it holds and therefore break the link between area and border.


That's it, you've created your first area and arguably the most famous bit of Winnatts head, the Sewer!


Now you're looking at the box that I've just messily drawn around the passage and thinking but that will draw water outside the cave... No afraid not, when therion processes the drawing, it will crop the area so it's only inside the passage walls.


You do have another two options, either creating an area inside the passage or creating an area bounded by another line.
I will only teach you inside the cave passage, I have created another Line border and this time used the area tool to fill it with flowstone (this is fictitious flowstone!). this is useful if you're creating pools of water in the middle of the passage or a small area of blocks in the middle of your passage, like the Cwm Dwr boulder chokes.


You can now click the Gear Button, if you click the gear button and it prompts you to open a file this is normal and should be pointing you towards the file Winbeysewer.thconfig

select the file and click open, the file should then run for you.


Next lesson: Points and Lines.
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
Lesson 4: Points and Lines.

Points are a great way in which we can get detail in, again much like areas and lines, there are many different options.

In the below example I place a Water flow point and then right click on it to bring up a dialogue box, there I can change the orientation of the water flow, to ensure it's flowing towards the sewer. click the red arrow and drag it to where you want it pointing.


Also I have put some ceiling steps in on either side of the Sewer, to ensure you have to crawl through it. When placing these, the yellow "tick" should face the higher side of the ceiling.


Now we can go crazy with lines, and start adding in the pitch after the sewer (yellow "tick" directed down the pitch), a label saying the sewer (by drawing the line label) then right clicking for the dialogue box.


and we can even add in point "passage gradients" and orientating them in the direction that the floor slopes down.


This is where your survey really takes off. "But!" I hear you cry, "it still doesn't look right".


Next lesson "have faith it will look nice when you're done" (or a small amount of coding).
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
Lesson 5: Make it look better in 30 seconds.



Go into your Config file, the third button along the top, and add in the command -layout local


then paste in the following code, you will instantly change the look of your file.


layout local

###to change the symbols###
symbol-set BCRA
symbol-hide group cave-centreline
symbol-assign line gradient BCRA
symbol-assign area sand AUT
symbol-hide line border
symbol-colour point water-flow [0 0 100]


###to change the colour###
colour map-fg [80 80 80]
#color map-fg altitude
colour map-bg [50 50 50]


  code metapost
### define water to be light blue
  def a_water (expr p) =
    T:=identity;
    thfill p withcolor (0.48, 0.84, 1.0);
    enddef;

### define sump to be dark blue
  def a_sump (expr p) =
    T:=identity;
    thfill p withcolor (0.05, 0.0, 0.7);
  enddef;
  endcode

legend on


endlayout
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
just sorted the end out, added two more points in (third image from right).

Also noted that the survex data is slightly out just at the end, from the survey looks like it needs to go from PW60 to PW62 (with PW61 being a lonesome point by itself).

So I've altered it in mine, but will need altering by people following along and also in the survex master copy, Rob/moose please could you like this if you've spotted it :)
 

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alastairgott

Well-known member
Building a larger cave...

So we've been dealing with a small section of cave, and have dealt with those pesky "scraps". but we now want to add bits onto our growing cave.


We decided that the best way of drawing the cave was from the bottom up, and we created a file to hold all of the bits that we drew at the bottom of the cave.


Now we've got other sections of the cave higher up, and might well find that there's other stuff off them (harpur hill etc). So we need to build a structure which can cope with this.


Common theory is that all survey sessions should have their own file, and should be dealt with separately. In this instance, I took Wardy's survey session from fox chamber to terminal sump and split it.


I picked an easy spot to split it, at the sewer. So now with two files, I need a way of joining them, I need a higher level file which will then pull in the lower level files, so I've created a master file which then refers down to three file sets.


There are some eccentricities of the master file if you want to add them in, but a basic master file needs a survey name, some inputs (ie where you've put the data), and some guidance on where you're joining the surveys together.


Theres nothing magical about it, that's it, mine is quite short and sweet. anything you don't want the software to look at gets a # symbol in front, this tells the software to ignore that line.


As you can see I've not yet got round to drawing foxchamber so have ignored it for now, that's your next job.


survey Winnatsmaster -title "Winnats head cave"


input Winbeysewer/Winbeysewer.th
#input Winnatsfoxchamber/Winnatsfoxchamber.th
input Winnatsthrufcbc/Winnatsthrufcbc.th


centreline
equate 24@Winbeysewer PW24@Winnatsthrufcbc
#equate FC5@Winnatsthrufcbc FC5@Winnatsfoxchamber
endcentreline


endsurvey




If someone's vaguely interested in drawing something up, then I've attached the next file to have a go at, again remove the .pdf
from [Winnatsfoxchamber.zip.pdf] and unzip it.
If you have a go at the bit I've circled and then post on https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=26206.0
when you've done.


Then we'll be able to add it to the rest...
 

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A_Northerner

Active member
I'm glad that the GottZone isn't closed for quarantine, I'll be looking through this when I've settled my affairs at work and am stuck at home. Cheers Al!
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
Yeast can't look after itself, I'm glad your still in good spirits, testing times of uncertainty for us all. At the moment I'm Schr?dinger's cat of employment.
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
I feel like a nerdy internet Z-list celebrity. I have one silent follower. :blink: and it's not even A-Northerner.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
I keep looking in to check you're alright and don't need any food, but I'm not trying to keep up with the Therion course, I should warn you  :tease:
 

alastairgott

Well-known member
Oh Yeh, back working again now, take each day as it comes. As long as I'm still being paid that's the main thing :)

On the food front, went to the Butcher cum farm shop on Monday and found EGGS!, SWassaages and chicken thighs. and 4 pints of milk too!

Monday was a great day! enough sausages for 10 meals in one bag.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
I'm glad to hear you've had some protein at last. Two Aberdeen Angus burgers for me tonight - I've been stomping the hills. Ahem - local hills, I should point out - walking from my own home, of course.
 
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