geologic_surfaces

image\geologic_surfaces_mod.jpg

General Module Function

The geologic_surfaces module provides complete control of displaying, scaling and exploding one or more geologic surfaces from the set of surfaces output by Krig 3D Geology. This module allows visualization of the topology of any or all surfaces and\or the interaction of a set of individual surfaces.

geologic_surfaces can explode geologic surfaces analogous to how Explode_and_Scale explodes layers created by 3D_Geology_Map or Krig_3D. The ability to explode the surfaces is integral to this module.

geologic_surfaces also allows the user to either color the surface according to the surface Elevation or any other data component exported by Krig_3D_Geology.

Module Input Ports

geologic_surfaces has three input ports.

  1. The leftmost port accepts the 2-D surface data fields from Krig_3D_Geology, Spline_Geology or Read_netCDF when it was used to save the output of either of these modules. Please note that if any portions of the input geology is NULL, these cells will be omitted from the surface that is created. This can save memory and provide a means to cut (in a Lego fashion) along boundaries.

  2. The middle input port will accept the explode factor from the Explode and Scale module. Note using Explode and Scale with geologic_surfaces is not necessary,.as geologic_surfaces has its own explode factor parameter that can be used to set the surface separation directly.

  3. The right input port will accept a scale factor from the Explode and Scale module or other modules with a Z scale port. Note using Explode and Scale with geologic_surfaces is not necessary,.as geologic_surfaces has its own scale factor parameter that can be used to set the surface scaling directly.

Module Output Ports

geologic_surfaces has four output ports.

  1. The first port (grey-green) outputs the explode factor.

  2. The second port outputs the Z-exaggeration.

  3. The third port, from the left, outputs the data field containing all selected surfaces. This port can be connected to any module that can process data fields, such as the isoline module, which can use the data field to display isolines on the geologic surface, the statistics module, which can report the characteristics of the suface data, or the generate axes module, which can generate a set of axes around the surface display.

  4. The rightmost port outputs a renderable geometry of the surface that can be input to the viewer. This port can also be connected to the color legend module to set the limits of the displayed color scale.

image\geologic_surfaces_panel.jpg

Module Control Panel

The control panel for geologic_surfaces is shown above.

The Z Scale determines the amount of vertical (or z-coordinate direction) scaling that will be applied to each geologic layer.

Explode determines the distance by which each geologic layer will appear to be separated. In geologic_surfaces, explode causes the surfaces to stay aligned with exploded layers.

The Surface Z Offset parameter specifies the distance that the surface willl be translated in the Z axis before display.

The Min Thick(ness) parameter determines the minimum spacing between surfaces when hierarchy is imposed.

Note that these parameters affect the Z coordinates of the grid nodes, but not the values of the depth or elevation that are associated with those nodes by Krig 3D. Recall that in EVS each grid node has x,y,z, coordinates, and property values associated with the node. The property value assigned to the nodes by Krig_3D_Geology is the original (pre-scaling and translation) elevation or depth values. The Z Exaggeration and Surface Z Offset parameters affect the Z coordinates of the nodes of the quadrilateral elements in the mesh, but do not affect the property values associated with the nodes. This distinction is important for the user to remeber when passing the field data from geologic_surfaces to other modules. As an example, if the field output of geologic_surfaces is connected to the Statistics module, the user will see that specifying different Z Exaggeration and Surface Z Offset parameters affects the coordinate extents reported by Statistics, but has no effect on the parameter value distribution reported (.ie., the min, max , mean, std deviation, and histogram bins).

The Account for Hierarcy toggle causes geologic surfaces that might otherwise intersect each other to be corrected to account for Geologic Hierarchy.

The Pass Null to All Surfaces toggle causes the Null nodes/cells defined in any surface to be passed to all of the surfaces.

The Reverse Hierarcy toggle causes hierarchy to be imposed from the bottom up versus the normal top down.

The Transparency slider affects the transparency (opacity) of all surfaces.

The Surfaces toggles allow you to control which surfaces are output for visualization or subsequent processing.

The All & 1st buttons respectively set (turn on) all of the surfaces toggles or only the first one in the list.

The Map Data toggles allow you to control which data components are included in the surfaces.

The Data Mapping radio-box toggles allow you to control to which surfaces the data components are mapped. For example, if Top is selected, layer thicknesses are mapped to the surface that corresponds to the top of each layer.