Vessel Configuration Manager

In this section:

Introduction

Multibeam data are imported by the command Import Multibeam Sonar Data. As a part of the import the make and vendor of the multibeam echosounder is registered. Vital information like the mount parametres are read from the datafiles and will be saved in a Vessel configuration file in the project. Multibeam files with different installation parameters will have reference to different vessel configuration setup.

The Vessel Configuration Manager is where the parameters for the multibeam survey lines can be verified. It is also possible to change the values from the survey to improve the processing result.

How to open the Vessel Configuration Manager

The Vessel Configuration Manager is opened from the Seafloor Main Menu. Click Edit and then click Vessel Configuration Manager.

It is also possible to open the Multibeam folder tools on the right click menu. From the menu select the Vessel Configuration Manager entry.

The Multibeam folder menu.

The content of the menu

The Vessel Configuration Manager dialog.

The Vessel Configuration Manager dialog is shown in the image above. The dialog is divided into the three parts:

Project
Vessel configurations
Survey lines

Each part will be discussed further in this section.

The Vessel Configuration Manager dialog is of type modal, which means that other functionality in Geocap is inactive until the dialog is closed by the OK or Cancel buttons.

The Project part

The pulldown menu after the text Project contains a list of open projects in Geocap. Normally only one project is open, but in Geocap it is possible to have several projects open at the same time. Each project can have one or more vessel configurations. The selection of project decides which vessel configurations which will be shown in the vessel configurations part.

The Vessel configurations part

The right-click dialog in the Vessel configurations part.

The Vessel configurations part shows the configurations for the actual project. If the project contains data from one multibram echosounder only, normally one configuration is necessary.

When clicking the name of a vessel configuration the corresponding Survey lines are shown below.

During the import of multibeam survey data, the configuration parameters from the echosounder is checked against existing vessel configurations. All parameters are checked, like the type of echo sounder, number of transmitters and receivers (single head, dual head), the mounting parameters for the echosounder and the motion sensor (offsets and rotations), content of datagrams (depth, range), etc. If any setting is different a new vessel configuration is created. This means that the operator can check the configurations to see if there are any changes during a survey.

By right clicking a vessel configuration a menu appears with this content:

Edit: Open the Edit Vessel Configuration dialog.
Rename: Change the name of the vessel configuration.
Create copy in: Will create a copy of tha vessel configurations. If several projects are loaded it is possible to copy to another project.
Delete: Remove the actual vessel configuration. It is not allowed to remove the configuration if it is used by any survey line.

The Create copy entry is useful if it is necessary to "play" with the configuration parameters to see differences or improvements in the survey data when changing the settings.