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<h2 id="tophead">CUCC Expedition Handbook - History of Survex</h2>
<h1>History of Survex as of 1996</h1>
<p align="center"><em>Cambridge Underground 1996, pp 63-6</em></p>
<p>[This article was published in CU 1996, shortly after the site was put
on the web. The text is reproduced without change.]
<h2>History of Survex</h2>
<p><b><i>by Wookey</i></b></center>
<p>Back in 1988 CUCC used a programmable calculator to reduce survey data
in Austria, and only on return to the UK did we have access to anything as
advanced as real survey software. This was Sean Kelly's 'Surveyor '88'
software, written for the "Below Belize" expedition. This was pretty good
- you could give it data and it would do the sums, display them in
windows, and print out the results, on multiple sheets if necessary. It
didn't take us long to find a couple of serious bugs, but as Sean was
still in Cambridge we could hassle him until he fixed them. However he
wasn't really interested in developing it any further, and the software's
deficiencies were beginning to become annoying (you couldn't use tabs to
separate data items, or '+' on positive clino readings, and the graphics
were very slow and uninterruptible, so if you accidentally pushed a button
you were stuck until it finished displaying (in several minutes time for
KH on a slow computer).
<p>So, I started to produce a spec for some better software, and Olly
Betts soon became interested and we worked together to decide what was
needed. Now there was already other software available at the time, but
the only other one that was any good which we knew of (SMAPS) was pretty
expensive at $99. So we took the same route as others, and decided to
write our own. The problem was that most authors had simply looked at
their own projects, and knocked together something sufficient for that.
Most of these had little or no loops processing as the authors didn't know
the maths or how to translate that into algorithms. There seemed no point
in repeating this short-sighted approach, so we determined to try and
produce something that would be useful to others as well as ourselves.
This meant it had to be versatile, and if we wanted it to be used it needed
to be free too. The basic spec was:
<ul>
<li>Multiple computing platforms supported
<li>Multiple languages supported
<li>Data to be entered with as little change as possible from the original
notes:<br>ie.
<ul>
<li>Free-form text entry
<li>Data entry ordering/characters specifiable (eg. . , / or ,
for decimal separator)
<li>Proper mathematically-based network reduction for loops
<li>Versatile naming conventions Connections made by either use of
existing station names, or saying station X is the same as station Y
</ul>
<li>Scalable, so it would work on slow small computers as well as big fast
ones.
<li>No software-imposed limits (eg. number of stations, legs, loops)
<li>Fast-as-possible cave display
<li>Source availability so anyone can make changes or additions
</ul>
<p>Surveyor '88 had many of the above features, and followed basically the
same design philosophy. We took the good ideas from that, and discarded
the bad ones. We could have worked from the Surveyor '88 source but our
multiple platforms requirement made that difficult as Surveyor '88 was
written in Pascal, and Pascal compilers were not readily available for all
machines. Thus we decided to write in C as it is a very portable
language and produces fast software.
<p>A Specification was duly written (which still comprises a large chunk
of the documentation, unfortunately) and we started writing, with Olly
quickly taking on nearly all the programming work. The first tangible result
was the prototype for CaveRot which was written during the 1991 expo in
BASIC and ARM code on an A3000.
<p>A trip to the Surveyors' meeting at the 1991 Swiss Caving Conference
showed us what was possible when we saw the Mac package 'Toporobot',
which was very capable and impressive. We talked to its author Martin
Heller, who was most encouraging, telling us that Toporobot was only ever
intended for the Mac, and we should go away and write some decent software
for all those other machines.
<p>The bones took shape rapidly and Survex became the software of choice
finally superseding Surveyor '88 during the 1992 expo. Since then it has
grown to several hundred K of source, with versions for DOS, RISCOS &amp;
UNIX. A major development was the use of the GNU PC compiler DJGPP which
removes the 640K memory limit imposed by DOS. This was necessary as
<span lang=de>Kaninchenh&ouml;hle</span> quickly became sufficiently large
&amp; complex that the miserable 640K provided on a DOS PC simply wasn't
enough memory to process it in.
<p>Five years on [1996], Survex has become a powerful cave surveying tool with one
of the most powerful data engines available. It lacks a great deal of
fancy user interface features (help, menus etc.) that can be found on other
good cave survey software packages, although the revolutionary
mouse-controlled CaveRot interface remains unique.
<p>A great deal of care has gone into designing the way that data is
entered, stored and processed. The command structure is neat powerful and
extensible. The network processing is done reasonably rigorously. It could be
done more rigorously, but a great deal of extra memory would be required
for little practical benefit.
<p>A number of other groups are now using it - it is particularly popular
in Brazil as the only survey software available in Portuguese. It has also
been translated to French, German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and US
English. Various other people have supplied add-ons such as an HTO
converter by Bill Purvis (HTO is a standard for the interchange of cave
survey data), and a program that combines Survex data, LRUD passage
data, and surface data then outputs it all as a DXF file for input into a
drafting package. This is being used by Chelsea Speleological Society in
their survey of <span lang=cy>Ogof Draenen.</span> It is also being used for
the OFD and Easegill re-surveys, and thus is the software of choice for the 3
longest systems in the UK.
<p><b>Distinguishing features:</b>
<ul>
<li>It's free!
<li>Multi-platform (from lowly 8088 PCs to UNIX systems)
<li>Powerful (in terms of survey complexity)
<li>Versatile (in terms of input data)
<li>Fast processing of survey data
<li>Hi-speed mouse and/or keyboard controlled survey viewer
<li>Good printer/plotter support.
<li>Source code freely available
<li>Multiple language support (English, US English, Portuguese, French,
German, Catalan, Spanish, Italian)
<li>PC version uses DPMI and so is compatible with Windows extended memory
management.
</ul>
<p><b>Data processing:</b>
<ul>
<li>Survey complexity limited only by available memory (on a 386 or better
PC you get up 128Mb of virtual disk memory as well as the memory in the
machine)
<li>Versatile system for hierarchical survey station naming, so station 36
in Stomping in cave number 161 is referred to in full as
'161.Stomping.36', but within 161 it is just 'Stomping.36', and within
Stomping it is just '36'.
<li>When specifying the data format you can use IGNORE and IGNOREALL to
allow direct reading of basic data from many other survey software
packages, e.g. Toporobot, CMAP, Compass, Karst, SMAPS(SEF), Survey,
!Survey (batch). Also any lines it doesn t understand at all will simply be
ignored.
<li>Multiple caves can be processed just as easily as one
<li>Data can be stored in single files, many files, or in directories, as
you see fit. Files can be included for processing within other files.
<li>Command files listing a set of Survex commands can be created for
complex tasks
<li>Surface topography can be included as contours or mesh
<li>Separate treatment of plumbed and horizontal (water-surface) legs (not
adjusted by clino adjustment)
<li>Free-text input with user-definable symbols, so you can choose the
separator, decimal point, command prefix etc. This aids import from other
programs, spreadsheet data, foreign languages etc.
<li>If no fixed points are given then the highest one is fixed at 0,0,0
automatically
<li>Network reduction by least squares. Standard errors calculated, and
recorded for each leg in vertical &amp; horizontal
<li>The survey network is split at articulation points when doing network
reduction, to increase speed and reduce memory requirements.
<li>Omitted clino readings give a vertical SD of tape/sqrt(10). This
basically means that clino-less data (eg. collected with a theodolite, or
by pacing), will stretch vertically, if attached to other data, allowing
for the fact that the height change is very unlikely to be more than the
length of the leg.
<li>Expected error/Standard deviations specifiable for all measurements
<li>Suitable BCRA Grade files supplied to set appropriate standard
deviations.
<li>Diving-style data understood, ie. Depth readings instead of Clino.
<li>Optional sequential loop closure, so new loops can leave old loops
unaffected.
<li>Output is binary (for speed) or ASCII (for people) 3d cave plot file,
text co-ordinate data, summary info, and error details.
<li>Summary statistics - Cave N/S, E/W, and Up/Down extents, total length,
adjusted length, number of legs, stations, time taken to process.
<li>BEGIN and END commands allow sections (usually surveys) to be defined,
and changed settings will not affect other data.
<li>Errors and warnings highlight the area of the line which Survex isn't
happy about (where appropriate).
<li>Warnings given for many common errors: The idea it to alert the user
to possible cock-ups, but to still try and process the data if possible.
<br>'Hanging' stations listed
<br>Compass given on plumbed leg
<br>Survey leg with same station at both ends - typo?
<br>Tape negative, or adjustment makes reading negative
<br>Compass reading not in range 0-360
<br>Clino reading over 90 degrees
<br>Length of tape measurement is less that change in depth (for diving
data)
<br>Same station fixed twice (Error if co-ordinates do not match)
<li>There are also comprehensive messages given for syntactical errors.
</ul>
<p><b>Printer support:</b>
<ul>
<li>Multi-page printouts (for big plots on small printers)
<li>8, 9 and 24 pin dot matrix (Epson, IBM Proprinter, and compatibles) -
specifiable printer codes
<li>PCL - i.e. all deskjets, laserjets and compatibles - specifiable
resolution
<li>Postscript - specifiable fonts and line widths
<li>HPGL driver - for various pen plotters - can use centre or corner
origin
<li>Canon BJ series special driver to come
<li>All drivers allow:
<ul>
<li>Any view printable - plan, elevation on any plane and angle of tilt.
<li>specifiable scale
<li>specifiable paper size
</ul>
<li>number of pages required, and arrangement (eg 3x2), is reported.
<li>Any arbitrary list of pages can be printed.
<li>Any of border, legs, station and labels can be printed/left out
<li>Dotted borders and corner alignment marks are included for accurate
cutting &amp; assembly of multiple sheets
<li>Names of processed surveys, and time of processing printed on all
plots.
</ul>
<p><b>Graphics:</b>
<ul>
<li>DOS graphics support for VGA, EGA, CGA, Hercules, 8514a, et al
<li>Acorn RISC OS at various resolutions
<li>X-Windows support
<li>Intuitive mouse-controlled cave control (zoom, pan and plan/elevation
swap), with choice of mouse moving viewpoint or object
<li>Automated rotation
<li>Direction of view, scale &amp; tilt indicators
<li>Even extremely large areas (hundreds of kilometres across) can be
smoothly viewed, but you can still zoom in to a few centimetres.
<li>Constant rotation speed (so small caves on fast computers don't spin
ridiculously fast)
<li>Multiple data files can be read &amp; displayed in different colours
(eg. cave &amp; surface colours)
<li>Labels plotted so they don t overlap and can be read
<li>Labels automatically removed while moving the plot
<li>Completely flat caves (i.e. Extended Elevations) are automatically
recognised and locked side-on
</ul>
<p><b>Other Utilities:</b>
<ul>
<li>DIFFPOS: utility for comparing two .pos files included
<li>SVX2HTO and HTO2SVX: for converting from &amp; to HTO data transfer
format
<li>EXTEND: for flattening the survey to create an extended elevation.
<li>SVX2DXF: converter now included for moving cave plots into CAD or
drawing packages in 3D.
</ul>
<p><b>So where next?</b>
<p>The driving force of development is CUCC's surveying needs, and the
requests of users. The time and effort required for producing a survey of
a big system like <span lang=de>Kaninchenh&ouml;hle</span> means that we
struggle to produce surveys containing each year's new finds. The reasons why
the new bits cannot simply be added to the existing drawing are threefold
<p>1) new bits go off the edge of the page
<br>2) new loops mean that the rest of the survey bends
<br>3) new additions often require redrawing of junctions or low-grade
surveys
<p>All of these can be often be bodged round for a year or two but sooner
or later you have to re-draw the whole lot. In the case of the elevation
it has become so complex that we are simply incapable of drawing anything
that makes sense!
<p>Doing the whole thing on computer would help in all of these areas. There
is no 'edge of the paper'. Perfect alterations can be made without smear
marks from rubbers. Adding the text so that it is all horizontal is easy. The
hard bit is bending existing survey sections when the centreline they were
originally drawn round has changed. Olly's 1991 computer project explored the
mechanisms required to achieve this, working from original work by David
McKenzie, and producing algorithms which could be applied to each vector or
bitmap cave data. The computer needs to be told how the drawing relates to
the centreline so that the whole lot can be stretched and rotated to fit.
This a feature that will eventually be implemented in Survex.
<p>In the meantime we have been looking at how to use existing LRUD (Left,
Right, Up Down) data to produce an enhanced view with volume, rather than
just a line survey. We concluded that the data as it stood was too
'humanistic' to be sensibly interpreted by a computer. Such things as
which side are left and right, what to do with all the '?' and '-' entries
at junctions and on pitches, etc. are all problematic. Andy Atkinson worked
out a compromise scheme where we give the computer some extra information
about junctions, chambers, and changes from predominantly horizontal to
vertical passage, as well as abandoning LRUD entirely for pitches and
using NSEW (North, South, East, West) instead. This new format can be
retro-fitted to existing data with the aid of the sketches in order to
make it sufficient. Julian Todd's handy experience with a firm
that writes CADCAM software gives him the tools and competence to write
software that does all the hard sums, hidden line removal, and 3d-drawing
relatively easily. Once this scheme is shown to be viable it is likely to
become a fully-fledged part of Survex, giving excellent cave visualisation.
<p>On a more mundane level work has been progressing towards fitting a
graphical front-end to Survex so that it can become a native application
in modern GUI Environments (Windows, RISCOS, X-Windows, MacOS,
etc). The main barrier to this is working out sufficiently cross-platform
ways of achieving it.
<p>Finally there is a huge list of features people would like. Many of
these require a more advanced format for the 3d files that Survex
currently outputs. This has been largely worked out and is likely to hit
the streets in the next version of Survex. This will allow the cave viewer
to know lots of stuff about the cave, like which bit is which survey, and
where the loops, junctions and entrances are, so that these things can be
displayed on request.
<p>SURVEX can be obtained from:
<br>Wookey, 734 Newmarket Rd, Cambridge, CB5 8RS 01223 504881(H) 01223
811679(W)
<br>Mailto:wookey (at) aleph1.co.uk
<br>Please send a formatted disc and a Stamped Self Addressed Envelope
<br>You can also get it from the UK cavers archive site at
ftp://chert.lmu.ac.uk/pub/chert/Survex by anonymous ftp. Also keep an eye
out for a Survex Website in the near future.
<p><em>[These days, get survex from <a href="https://survex.com/">https://survex.com/</a> ]</em>
<p><hr>
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