Choose Create Geology Multi-File
and this initial window will open:
From this menu, you select whether you are beginning a new gmf file, appending to an existing file or are ready to save. If you have only just begun the only option is to begin. You also specify whether the GMF file you are building represents layered geology or non-hierarchical water table surfaces. In the later case, special codes are added to the GMF file for you automatically. Choose "Next" to proceed.
From this menu, you select the layers and features from which you want to extract geology data. You can also choose whether to include all features of a layer or only the selected features. Let’s accept the current setting of all features of TopSurface. Hit Next to proceed and the "Setup Fields for Geology Multi-File Surface:" window will appear. You should then see:
In this window we can select the field that corresponds to the Z Coordinates for this surface. In our example, there is only one field associated with each point and that fiend is Z. We must also assign an appropriate Material Number for the FIRST layer of our model and should assign a Material Name for the FIRST layer (the name is optional). I emphasize FIRST, because the name and number we choose now will be used for the first TWO surfaces. That is because these surfaces comprise the top and bottom of the first layer represented by our GMF file. If we were dealing with groundwater surfaces we can and should name and number each surface individually.
Choose Top_ as the Z Coordinates (the default) and assign a number of 2 and a Material name of "Fill" as shown above. When you click on "Next" the following window will appear to confirm that you have written the surface.
At this point the GMF file creation window closes and it MIGHT appear that we are done. However, we have only started. We must reselect
to continue to add each surface of our GMF file. At this stage we COULD Finalize and write a single surface .gmf file. Although GMF files are usually used to define geologic layers, they can define single surfaces or sets of surfaces (but you should have selected water table surfaces earlier!).
Keep the default selection of Append and choose Next.
At this point we need to select the data layer containing the next surface to be appended to our GMF file. Choose Surface_2 and choose Next.
Notice for our second surface, the option of changing the Material Name or Number is grayed out (inactive). This is because the names we specified for surface one apply to the second surface also. This would not be the case if we had chosen non-hierarchical water table surfaces back at the beginning.
Choose BOT1 as the surface to use for our Z Coordinates and choose "Next" to proceed and the following window will again appear to confirm that you have written the surface.
We continue the above process for each surface of our site. For this example we are only going to select one more surface even though there are a total of 15 surfaces. (Feel free to do them all if you feel ambitious). Select Surface_3 as shown below.
We need to specify the Material Number and Name for the layer whose bottom is defined by this surface.
Specify the material number and name as shown. Choose "Next" to proceed and it will again confirm that you have written a surface.
When all surfaces have been added,
and select Finalize and Save to write the file.
A file browser will appear allowing you to specify the folder and file name. Save the file in the ctech\data\geology folder as evs-test.gmf:
When you click on "Save" the following window will appear to confirm that you have written the file containing all surfaces that were added.
A GMF file can be used for nearly all cases where we would use a .geo file. It represents hierarchical geology as does a .geo file. The only exception is that Map_Spheres cannot use a GMF file since there is no concept of borings associated with a GMF file.