About this release

This is a major upgrade release. The Geocap Seafloor interface and functionality is very much improved in this release. Much effort has been put into improving precision both in graphics and calculation, and Geocap ability to handle centimeter resolution is now expanded and improved.

Numerous bugs are fixed and new functionality is added to all our products. We strongly recommend switching to Geocap 6.1. Note that there are no project model updates between Geocap 5, Geocap 6.0 and Geocap 6.1. The development on Geocap 6.0 was terminated in 2011. The Geocap 6.1 will continue to evolve, and incremental releases will be made in the 6.1.x series in the coming months.

Themes:

Highlights

Seismic 2D viewer has been added. The viewer is opened with the pulldown Windows > New > Cross Section Window. In addition to Seismic lines and Vertical calibrated images, other dataset e.g. crossing lines may be browsed into the viewer. Cross sections through overlapping point clouds is another application of this viewer. One obvious usage is to produce figures of seismic and interpretation that is not easily done in our 3D view. Future development may be seismic interpretation, editing of datasets and more. If you have any ideas, please let us know.

LOD (Level Of Detail) Point Display. This enable Geocap to display very huge point datasets, e.g. multibeam data, lidar data and more with a dynamic approach. This will be further developed. Please give us feedback and input on what your needs might be.

Major updates to Geocap Seafloor, see below.

High precision (double precision) calculation and visualization implemented to address the need of centimeter precision in XY and Z in all coordinate systems.

Improvements in memory handling.

Updates

Changelog

6.1.1

GUI

Graphics windows fullscreen mode (for stand alone windows) is toggled using the Escape key, not Spacebar.

Any number of standalone graphics windows may be now created. Standalone graphics windows are always on top.

All graphics windows are represented with a small icon in the lower part of Geocap. You can click these to change active graphics window.

Graphics toolbar: Three more camera directions (-x, -y, -z) has been added. Camera directions has been collected under one button. The camera now has a "fly-to" movement, instead of the old "jump-to" action.

Operation Modes has been removed

The menu entry Plugins has been removed. Everything related to plugin managment has been moved to Tools > Options > Plugins

When focus is on the graphic window: Ctrl+C will copy the visual content to clipboard. This is convenient for pasting this as an image e.g. into a Powerpoint or whatever.

A new icon for selecting (finding) displayed project items by dragging a rubber band rectangle in the graphics window. Returns a popup with a list of found datasets. The icon is found in the top icon bar, next to the Locate Project Object From Graphics icon.

The Project

Copy and paste in the project now supports very large size data files. In previous Geocap versions there were problems with copy/paste on files that were of Gigabyte sizes.

The project save button has an entry 'Free memory cache' that frees memory used by the project. Click the tiny arrow behind the diskette icon. This is irrespective of cache size. Only objects that are unmodified will be released. The Project memory size is listed in the message window.

Scripts and text objects in the project are now supported in a Generic folder. The Scripts folder is deprecated.

Table View: Clear selection button available on dataset table view.

Commands

ConvertToSeismic for VCIs (vertical calibrated images) now handles conversion by color table. This means that the colors in the color table will be used to set amplitude values in the converted seismic.

Function can now set origo and spacing of structured points / image data.

Calculate Line Distance can now set distance unit. Available units are meter, kilometer, nautical miles.

Import ASCII Column reader reports line number of ignored lines. Lines are ignored when thy do not match import settings, possible because of errors in the files.

Scripting

Command Log output can be redirected to the message window in the command log settings dialog. This may be used for debugging of scripts and scripted commands. To activate, open the command log under Windows > Command Log, click the gear wheel and Editor: Message window. OK - Maybe only for those of you that are scripting.

qexistingdir returns forward slash '/' separators.

Added command qfromnativeseparators to convert paths to forward slash /

The sfdatasource command now has an argument 'warning on| off' to enable or disable warnings during the loading of spatial vector files

Install Script has been moved to the Tools menu.

An example script showing how to create a standalone QTcl window was added to the Help > Examples pulldown.

General

Updated documentation. See http://www.geocap.no/doc

Flight tour will now have a smooth transition between first and last camera in loop mode, if first and last camera are equal.

Improvement: Deleted objects are moved to invisible trash and synced with disk only during saving of the project. This ensures that the project structure and corresponding datafiles are always consistent, avoiding datasets in the project manager pointing to non-existing data files.

The area calculator now lets you drape the calculated area on a sticky surface with a user selected color and opacity.

GIM

Command Assign inline/crossline coordinates added.

Dedicated dialogs for surface creation from diagonal tracking.

Surface attributes AverageTime and AverageAmplitude added.

Shelf

Bathymetric profile analysis: The FOS (foot of slope) list can now display decimal degrees. Right click FOS list to change format.

Bathymetric profile analysis: Distance calculation method combo text set to standard vincenty or flat earth + color on average gradient interval will reflected in interval text.

Bathymetric profile analysis: Graphs are now not drawn on top of rulers. The rulers will have white background. + It is possible zoom further out than the with of the profile.

Zoom to data now available on velocity profile.

1% Sediment Thickness Points: Columns for FOS name, analysis name, and profile name will be added to Table View, if they exist as columns in FOS dataset.

Command Gradient Band Analysis now allow steepness up to 90 degrees.

Seafloor

Improved import of Multibeam Sonar data:

Import speed has been significantly improved.
Implemented Cancel button when importing Multibeam Sonar data.
When clicking Cancel on import, current survey line is removed from project.
Project is automatically saved after import of every 50 survey line.
New option for duplicate files: Skip, Duplicate and Replace.
Survey lines which have no points are removed.
Improved message report when importing multibeam files. Files which fails are reported and for which reason.

New commands:

Export Multibeam Data
Show Survey Line Properties
Show Dataset Properties
Show Chart Properties
Convert Multibeam Data
Revert Flagged Points in multibeam folders, will reset deleted points.

Reports:

A new report generator has been added for most commands. The report (log) is saved as a text object in a Report folder under the folder where the command is executed, named with date and time and the name of the command.
The logfile is also saved in the history tab on the Properties menu for surface after the command Gridding Files.
Improved message report when importing multibeam files. Files which fails are reported with a description for which reason.
Improved the report of input parameters in the commands Gridding Chart/Files/Multibeam Data.

Other:

Memory management of Multibeam sensor data has been improved
Show properties available on selected data objects or charts.
It is now possible to filter datasets by name in all Seafloor command menus.
New tab Hill Shade in command Export Chart Data.
New Surface depth filter for multibeam data.
The command Depth Processing has been renamed to Depth Filtering
The command Depth Filtering has been enabled for XYZ points
Implemented more flags for gsf files.
Verified new echo sounders like EM2040, Reson and R2Sonic.
Added import of Norwegian Hydrographic Office's (Sjøkartverkets) Tide file.
The Command Export Contours has new options to revert Z values, and set minimum and maximum depth level. Also, when exporting to Dxf, the bold contours are saved on layer Bathy_Major and normal contours on layer Bathy_Minor.
The commands Gridding Files/Multibeam can now make several Statistical Binning grids in one run.
Remove Chart Data and Remove Multibeam Data will also remove corresponding graphics when running the commands.
Implemented Eiva RLX file import.
The commands Display Multibeam/Soundings are updated with option for LOD (level of detail) point marker size
The commands Display Multibeam/Soundings will now use cyclic colour table for soundings display when not using depth range colours.
The Create entries in the Seafloor Main Menu’s menu bar have been moved to the File menu. The entries in the file menu are now also available in the Seafloor menu in the Geocap Main window menubar.
The Vessel Configuration Manager has been modified. User can now set in the vessel configuration if head mount offset (along and across) should be applied in swath to points conversion or not. Earlier, head mount offset was only applied in range to swath conversion. This is still the default.

Oil & Gas

Manipulator for velocity cubes will handle rotated cubes.

Loading Pick Groups without data results in message to user with question about delete.

Plotting

New button Open Folder on main panel.

New filtering (geocap2ps.exe) that accepts and removes invalid/collapsed polygons from color filled contours/polygons.

Added 5 extra entries for Lines and points.

Link to external PostScript Language Reference on the Help pulldown.

Bug fixes

General

The mainwindow tabexists command now correctly returns false for tabs that have been closed

Fixed memory leak in LOD Grid visualization.

Aliasing effect when viewing LOD 2D seismic from a distance has been removed.

Interpretations: Delete has been added to the PickGroups right-click menu.

Clicking Cancel when editing a command will now revert the command to its original state even when Execute has been pressed.

Command Stack keeps contents after pressing OK during edit

Operation Modes button in edit schemas dialog has been disabled

New colortables are now correctly renamed with unique numbering. The colortable view is also automatically sorted.

Edit on Display Simple Feature is now possible in workflows.

Multiple select in tableview when editing is now allowed.

Zoom with keyboard shortcut z and rubberband rectangle outside previous window does not crash Geocap anymore.

Plotting: Frame drawn inside instead of onto window frame on some contoured datasets: Fixed.

GIM

Fixed bug in reading attributes from external cube.

GIM Interpretation Window does not create window icon at the bottom of the main window and can now be closed properly

Shelf

Command Optimize Outer Limit now creates or updates any "Point Distance" field data columns. At least if they are created in the latest Geocap versions. If you end up with a remnant of an old Distance to previous point (M) column, because your outer limit was created in an older Geocap version, then please just edit the dataset in Table view and remove that column.
Bathymetric profile analysis: The FOS selection list is no longer limited to 10 only points. It can now list up to 5000.

Seafloor

Test on empty grids in charts gridding.
The command Points Classification has got a fix.
The command Make Profile has got a fix.
Fix for avoiding multiple vessel configurations for gsf files
Fix for using absolute range in colour tables in Display Soundings/Multibeam Data, did not work
Bugfix in table view when editing Seafloor Navigation data with DateTime Column

Oil & Gas

Actor becomes child of Poly Data in single Pick Group display; display of all Pick Groups results in actor with Ihorizon as parent.
Edit Ihorizon now works for deleting empty Pick Groups
Copying amplitudes from seismic cube to workspace results in Structured Points instead of Image Data.

Known issues

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