The logbook is the place where we record the rigging of caves as soon as possible after we discover them. For a particularly fine example of rigging guides in a logbook, scroll through <ahref="../../years/2015/logbook.html">the 2005 logbook</a>.
<p><strong>SAFETY:</strong> Sketched rigging guides are most intensively used during the few days after the pitch is first rigged, and this is also the time when accidents are most likely, so this is an occasion where hours count. <em>Sketch the rigging in the logbook as soon as possible</em> and make sure a copy is at both base camp and top camp.
<p>When a cave is derigged,
a good way of getting the rope lengths for your rigging guide is to
leave the knots in ropes removed so they can
be <b>measured</b>, but these days our caves are a bit deep
and complicated for this to be feasible.
Although a good survey and details of the belays
can be used to estimate the length of rope needed, this is no substitute for
measuring how much rope it actually took to rig. So please do this during the initial exploration and write it down in your survey notes.</p>
You will already have an "Interim rigging guide" in the logbook entries of the trips, and also sketches on waterproof paper
which were made underground which were stored in the survey wallet and scanned to produce "notes-XXX.jpg" files in the online survey wallet for your trip. For small caves the logbook entry may be all you need.
<p>Collect together your notes for the rigging guide now, including all the pitch lengths. It is a good idea to copy these notes now and put them in the plastic survey wallet or to photograph them and put the files in the <ahref="newwallet.html">online survey wallets</a>. The next step of doing the survey can take some time so get the rigging data in order now so that it doesn't get forgotten.
<p>A <b>Rigging Guide</b> of the vertical sections is published with the cave survey and the cave passage descriptions in the cave guide after surveying is complete.
<p>There are three different activities for rigging topos:
<ul>
<li>drawing them up (either scanning or re-drawing scrappy images out of logbooks),
<li>making them findable/appear in cave descriptions,
<li>(optionally) making prettier versions for important caves which have complex rigging.
</ul>
<p>The simple and nicest-looking way to make them findable is to add them to the HTML inline in cave descriptions. For a finished example see the rigging topo for the "<ahref="/1623/204/swings.html">Merry Go Round</a>" pitches in the Swings and Roundabouts area in 204.
<ahref="caveentry.html">Creating a new cave in the online system</a> is how you create the inline HTML. It is the next step in this Survey Handbook sequence of pages. <br><em>[To Do - improve documentatiton for how to add in image files in cave descriptions]</em>
<p>You should produce a separate rigging guide file for each connected set of pitches which will live in<br>
<p>The format is important. Please <em>don't</em> use PDF: if you are scanning a hand-drawn sketch then JPEG is best for our purposes as it is compact and we reuse it easily elsewhere in the system.
<p>If you are using a drawing package then produce the file in SVG format.
<ahref="https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/14/16_years_inkscape_v1/">Inkscape</a> is what most cavers use as it's free and stable. This will make it possible to edit and update your topo in future.
<p>Discussions on Expo Slack after the 2019 expo resulting in us consolidating rigging topo files into <var>expofiles/rigging_topos/</var> when previously they had had a number of different homes. So if you remember putting them somewhere else int he past, don't do that now. Put them in <var>expofiles/rigging_topos/</var>.
<p>[ We could dream up some fancy scheme for indexing the rigging for every pitch in the system and add that
into troggle but frankly we don't think it's worth the effort.]
