ToolBar
Lateral panel
Navigating
Draw/load/edit
Drawing polylines, Dip-Domain, Panels, and Selections using the polyline tool
Drawing vectors
Dip Domain creation via stereoplot point of view


Dip Domain creation via Polyline to Dip Domain analysis
Dip Domain creation via Triangles to Dip Domain analysis
Editing a polyline
Load a polyline
Editing a Dip domain
Editing a panel
Additional operations












3D Window

From the main menu, select: Plot 3D View. All the selected data that include spatial information are sent to this window.




The 3D window includes a toolbar on top and a lateral panel, allowing, navigation, visualisation, editing, selection, analysis and export of data.

ToolBar

The ToolBar consists of 21 buttons.


1 - Selection
2 - Draw polylines.
3 - Modify polylines
4 - Draw vectors
5 - Join polylines
6 - Cut planar polygon
7 - Create an axial surface
8 - Reflect a plane
9 - Move planar polygons
10 - Rotate planar polygons (not yet fully working)
11 - Trace analysis
12 - Reset the 3D boundaies
13 - Camera Point of View
14 - Camera Zoom
15 - Camera Move
16 - Camera Rotare
17 - Camera rotate about vertical axis
18 - Camera rotate about horizontal axis
19 - Camera rotate about a Point of Interest
20 - Scaling factor
21 - Area selection tool

Lateral Panel

It includes 4 tabs

Defines the style of the 3D window
The top listbox hides/shows and adds layers. The bottom listbox hides/shows objects
Shows properties and functions associated with the selected object
Gets the coordinates of a clicked point (provided the pixel is not empty)


Navigating in the 3D window

The default view when the 3D window is loaded is from Top and can be changed by selecting different points of view from the drop-down menu of the toolbar (Button 13).


Zoom

Select button 1 of the toolbar and then, holding Ctrl+Shift+mouse left button, move the mouse up and down to zoom in and out. Alternatively, select button 14 of the toolbar and, holding the mouse left button, move the mouse up and down. In this second case, to deactivate zooming press button 1 of the toolbar.

Move camera

Select button 1 of the toolbar and then, holding Shift+mouse left button, move the mouse. Alternatively, select button 15 of the toolbar and, holding the mouse left button, move the mouse up and down. In this second case, to deactivate moving press button 1 of the toolbar.

Rotate camera around a point

1 – Rotate around a point in the centre of the scene. Select button 1 of the toolbar and then, holding Ctrl+mouse left button, move the mouse. Alternatively, select button 16 of the toolbar and, holding the mouse left button, move the mouse

2 – Rotate around a vertical axis lying in the centre of the scene. Select button 17 of the toolbar and, holding the mouse left button, move the mouse left and right.

3 – Rotate around an horizontal axis lying in the centre of the scene. Select button 18 of the toolbar and, holding the mouse left button, move the mouse up and down.

For options 1 to 3 the position of point/axis around which camera rotates, can be moved forward/backward by holding the Ctrl button and moving the mouse wheel.

4 - Rotate around a point defined by the user. Selects button 19 of the toolbar and, holding the mouse left button, move the mouse. The point around which camera rotates is the point clicked by the user, which is repositioned in the centre of the scene. If the user clicks in the empty space, rotation is performed around the centre of the dataset.


Draw/load/edit objects

Drawing polylines, Dip-Domain, Panels, and Selections using the polyline tool

Select button 2 of the toolbar and click with the mouse left button on the non-empty space (press “Esc” to remove the last added point)




If, in the drawing options → 3D option, the dip domain from polyline option is activated (value = 1), while drawing a polyline the best-fit plane will be automatically drawn, like in the figure on the right.

Once you have finished drawing the polyline, click on the edit tab

Selecting the Polyline button, creates a polyline that is added to the dataset.

Selecting the Panel button, adds a panel passing trough the drawn nodes.

Selecting the Selection button, adds a selection, passing trough the drawn nodes (the first and last ones will be linked).

Selecting the D.D. Button, adds the best-fit Dip Domain


Notice that for Dip Domains and polylines, a unit/layer field is required.
The Unit/layer must be selected in the upper list-box of the Object panel.

Also notice that, if the object is the first element added to an empty file (e.g. only a mesh has been loaded), it will be asked to create a new file





Drawing vectors

Select button 4 of the toolbar and click with the mouse left button on the non-empty space the starting and ending point of the vector.


Dip Domain creation via stereoplot point of view

Creating a dip domain from a stored Point of View includes two steps:

  1. Go in the stereoplot window and right-click with the mouse in the position corresponding to the pole of the desired plane (a plot must exist). From the pop-up menu select Add point of view. Notice also that each time a tensorial analysis is performed, the directions of eigenvectors associated with the maximum and minimum eigenvalues are stored.

  2. In the 3D window right-click in the position where the dip domain must be created. If stored directions exists, in the pop-up menu select add Dip domain and select the value from the list of the stored directions.




Dip Domain creation via Polyline to Dip Domain analysis

This procedure extracts a suite of dip domains from the nodes of selected polylines

Select button 11 of the toolbar, and then select/deselect polyline/s. On the keyboard press Y to start the analysis on the nodes of the selected polylines.

The software will seek for the bigger dip domain satisfying the conditions defined in the drawing options/Planar regression. These conditions includes:

Once the bigger dip domain is found, nodes included in this domain are extracted from the dataset. This procedure is recursively applied until domains accomplishing for the setted conditions are found.

The Unit of the new dip domain is that selected in the upper list-box of the object panel.



Drawing options/Planar regression includes others three options

Dip Domain evaluation allows the visualization of regression results (significantly increases the computational speed). In particular this allows to plot, for each dip domain, data that project on the dip domain, with a distance from the domain defined by the Upper and Lower distances.



Dip Domain creation via Triangles to Dip Domain analysis

This procedure works with triangles of meshes, and involves the selection of triangles by means of the area selection tool (button 21 of the toolbar) and then, from the pop-up menu (mouse right-click), selection of the triangles to DD option. A best fit plane is extracted from the point set including the vertexes of the selected triangles.  



Editing a polyline

Select button 1 of the toolbar and click with the mouse the target polyline. In the edit tab of a list of options will appear (provided the polyline has been elected).

Selecting the Panel button, adds a panel passing trough the nodes of the polyline.

Selecting the Selection button, adds a selection, passing trough the nodes of the polyline (the first and last ones will be linked).

Selecting the D.D. button, adds the best-fit Dip Domain

Selecting the Erase button, erases the polyline.

The tools on the left side of the edit panel allow to split the polyline (select the splitting node with arrow buttons), revert the order of nodes, or edit the nodes' coordinates, which allow to copy coordinates from and into a spreadsheet.

Adding, removing or modifying the position of a node requires, once the polyline is selected, selecting button 3 of the main toolbar.


Loading a polyline

In addition to the procedure described above, to import polyline, additional methods include:

  - Import from *.dxf files:Main window menu → Objects → Import DXF

  - Import from a text file: Main window menu → Objects → Import Polyline → Import from file

  - Copy/paste from spreadshhet: Main window menu → Objects → Import Polyline → Import from Clipboard

In the last two cases the file/copied data must be organised in three columns, without header, including the X, Y and Z coordinates of each node.


Editing a Dip Domain


Select button 1 of the toolbar and click with the mouse the target Dip-domain. In the edit tab of a list of options will appear (provided the ip domain has been elected).

In the lower portion of the tab are listed the attributes of the Dip Domain.

In the upper portion there are three group-boxes:

Plane:

The [%] button resizes the panel, while [X], [Y], and [Z] buttond move the panel along its strike, dip direction, normal direction. For these operation the % and the amount of displacement are defined in the red box.

Points:

[<] and [>] buttons select a node of the Dip Dpmain, and [X] and [Y] buttons displace the node along the domain's strike and dip direction s, respectively (the amount of displacement is defined in the red box). [-] and [+] buttons add and remove a selected node.

Rotate:

Rotate the plane (the angle is defied in the red box) around the vertical axis [V]; the strike direction [A], dip direction [D] and around a user defined direction [C] (in this case azimuth and plunge must be introduced in the blue boxes).



In the central portion of the tab the Plot button draws a stereoplot including all the selected data that project on the dip domain, whose distance from the domain is lower that that introduced in the green boxes.


Clone and Erase buttons clone and erase the selected dip domain.







Editing a Panel



When a new panel is created, the Upper and lower Z coordinates of the panel are automatically defined, and correspond to the upper and lower Z coordinates of the dataset.

To edit or perform operations on panels,select press button 1 of the toolbar and then select the panel.






In the upper part of the tab are listed the textures that can be applied to the panel. The first option is “No texture”. Select it and press Apply button. A simple colour will be applied.In the same list box are listed all the loaded textures, select the desired one and click apply. Slide-bar allows to set texture transparency.



To change the upper and lower Z coordinates of the panel use the boxes below the upper list-box. To erase a panel click the Erase button.


The length of the panelis provided in this box


Section button projects data onto the panel and a new picture is created (you will be also asked to save it as *.svg file), where elements' apparent dip is plotted. The intersection between the section and all the selected Polylines and Dip-Domain is also plotted.

Plot button projects data onto the panel. Data are send to the 2D scatterplot window (provided their projection is inside the panel), adding along-panel X and Z coordinates.


For both section and Plot functions, data can be projected onto the panel using either a panel-perpendicular direction, or an eigenvector direction that has been assigned to data in the stereoplot window. Notice that different eigenvectos can be associated with different data, so that, for exmple, data from different portions of a fold can be projected onto the panel, according to the local fold hinge direction.







Additional operations