Which is the best or recommended software to download for a computerised survey similar to  'Goatchurch' which strangely has not finished due to problems with the software I presume 
Is there any problems to watch out for?
I have heard that Survex is confusing ?

Please advise

I only have reasonable experience of two programs: Survex and Compass.

Survex was written by geeks for geeks and is therefore ... geeky. It is very flexible and quite powerful, it just takes a little time and attention to understand. Arguably it is now being superseded by Therion . I haven't played with that yet but suspect it is worth a look.

Compass is superficially easier to use, but in fact actually requires as much thought as Survex to get it right. It is what was used to generate the Goatchurch survey you mention. the only reason that project has stalled is the need to get Chris and I sat at the same desk for a couple of hours. the final drawing is a first-order pig.

I've used Survex and On Station. OS is pretty easy to use and has an input form similar to Microsoft Excel, Survex is a bit of a pain to use but produces a 'better looking' survey than OS, an afternoons tinkering and you'll probably be able to get your head around the programming. OS also can show different surveys in different colours which is useful when working out survey legs, errors etc. Hwoever, OS is no longer developed and was designed for Windows 3.1 so gets stroppy if too much data is input.

The main cave survey guru in Derbyshire, the esteemed John Beck uses AutoCAD.

Its a full on engineering CAD package, but once you get the basics, its pretty good for drawing surveys with the whole groove 3D thing going on.

However - I've never heard of anyone else using it, Survex seems to be the most popular package it would seem.

Of course you'd have to save your pennys if you where going to actually purchase AutoCAD software as its blinking expensive.

I still use my old copy from what when I wos just a lowly engineering student.

Ive not done a survey from scratch using it - just added to, and amended one of Johns.

My colleague who draws up our mines surveys uses a combination of AutoCad and CorelDraw. The mines are more or less level workings with no significant elevations to concern us, so no 3D issues. Nevertheless, you now know that someone else also uses AutoCad for underground surveys.

I believe that the survey of Hirlatzh?hle was drawn using AutoCAD with a set of add-ons called CAD-f?r-H?hle.

I have been using Survex in combination with Tunnel with great success for drawing up large systems in Matienzo.

Survex is great for plotting your survey data to see the positions of the passages in a 3D model. You can then print out scale plans and elevations to draw to scale on paper.

Tunnel then allows you to draw your survey for publication. It imports your Survex data and your pencil sketches, which you then use to draw over on the computer. It differs from using conventional drawing packages (like Corel or Autocad) in three major ways:
1) It is free. Developed by cavers for cavers.
2) It provides all the cave survey line types and symbols as standard, making the drawing process faster.
3) It attaches the sketch to the centre line data from Survex, so it at a later date an error is found, or a loop closure causes your whole survey to be distorted, then Tunnel will automatically redraw your sketch for you around the new position of the centre line data.

Here is an example of a survey drawn in Tunnel:
http://www.geography.lancs.ac.uk/Matienzo/surveys/0105-08-Jan.png

I have also written some pages to explain the surveying process from in cave surveying to drawing up using these tools, including examples of real survey notes and the resulting data files for Survex:
http://www.ulsa.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Surveying_How_To

Survex and Tunnel may be developed by Geeks for their own use, but they are not difficult to use. You need to understand how cave surveying works in order to understand the tools, but once you get to grips with that the tools are quite straight forward. There are also mailing lists for Survex and cave surveying were you can get help from a large number of other users. See the http://www.survex.com website for details. Online tutorials for Tunnel can be found here: http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Tunnel

Stein-Erik Lauritzen, professor of speleology has written a program called grottolf. It can be downloaded here.

Francis

out of interest footleg (if your not in matienzo yet) - can you import Autocad data into survex ?

SamT said:

out of interest footleg (if your not in matienzo yet) - can you import Autocad data into survex ?

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Survex consists of two main programs. Cavern which crunches survey data, and reads plain text files. And Aven which is the cave viewer application. Cavern almost certainly does not directly digest autocad data. However it does understand most survey data (e.g. Tape, Compass, Clino. Tape, Compass, Depth (diving data), X,Y,Z coordinate data). So you could probably export Autocad as DXF (which is plain text) and then write a simple program to convert this into X,Y,Z station positions and connecting legs which Cavern could crunch.

The Aven viewer reads the .3d files output by Cavern, and lets you view the cave in 3D. You can output the centreline in DXF format for import into Autocad, which is what I think a lot of people do for drawing up surveys. You can also import DXF into CorelDraw I think, so this provides a way to get the centreline into these drawing packages for drawing up.

However I think Tunnel is a far better way to go because it handles the cave data much better, and deals with survey correction automatically when survey data is shifted by loop closures and other errors.

somehow i've never met Tunnel before. looks interesting, I'll either have to find some new cave or dig out my Odin Mine survey and draw it up.
I've used PaintShop Pro before

thanks

Why don't the 'geeks' make the software more user-friendly so that we don't have to  trying to make sense of this jargon  :read: ? 

whirlwind digger said:

Why don't the 'geeks' make the software more user-friendly so that we don't have to  trying to make sense of this jargon  :read: ? 

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In some cases (not all) because they don't think you are worthy enough to use it if you can't handle the jargon. Not saying I agree, but it's certainly true.

You probably right Graham, I understand the principle behind it, its just when they start on about files that and files this ...

It's a shame that there is no one good enough to write it in a straight forward English language 

whirlwind digger said:

You probably right Graham, I understand the principle behind it, its just when they start on about files that and files this ...

It's a shame that there is no one good enough to write it in a straight forward English language 

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I have certainly heard it said (in certain quarters) that if you cannot get your computer to do what you want by typing command line instructions then you shouldn't be using one.

Does anyone out there use a tablet and pen type thing - rather than a mouse for this type of stuff. Seems like it would be much better. Im sure its what the CAD pro's use.

Any feedback from those that might (thinking of my mouse clicking induced rsi type elbow pain)

SamT said:

Does anyone out there use a tablet and pen type thing - rather than a mouse for this type of stuff. Seems like it would be much better. Im sure its what the CAD pro's use.

Any feedback from those that might (thinking of my mouse clicking induced rsi type elbow pain)

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Buy the biggest and highest resolution graphics tablet that you can afford. I tried my cousin's A3 fancy-schmancy one and it was great. Then bought a small (usable area A5?) one - total waste of money.

Oh, just remembered, I have a small graphics tablet for sale, any offers? :halo:

To be fair to these guys who designs the surveying software, I'm sure it not even easy for them, maybe one day.....

graham said:

whirlwind digger said:

You probably right Graham, I understand the principle behind it, its just when they start on about files that and files this ...

It's a shame that there is no one good enough to write it in a straight forward English language 

Click to expand...

I have certainly heard it said (in certain quarters) that if you cannot get your computer to do what you want by typing command line instructions then you shouldn't be using one.

Click to expand...

That may well be true, Graham. However if we could all write software etc the marketplace would be very small.
Most of use want software that's user friendly, without the need to have a full understanding of it.

I would hazard a guess that most of us don't fully understand the mechanics and engineering in car - doesn't stop us from driving one though. 

I personally use "Walls" produced by the Texas Speleological Survey which can be downloaded from http://www.utexas.edu/tmm/sponsored_sites/tss/Walls/index.html.  The program comes with an excellent set of tutorials, and is very easy to start using.  It also allows detail to be added to the centreline data, so detail will morph if data is altered for whatever reason.  I don't use the detail stuff, but Ouan who posts here does with really good results.