Compass help please

[DaveP]

It has been a little while since I used Compass last. Last week I entered a bunch of survey data into a friends laptop, we were able to view the cave stick map with no problems. This week he emailed me the MAK and DAT files.

All the surveys are listed under my "File Tree" but I can not open them (Edit Cave Survey or File). When I "Process and View Cave" it only shows the first survey in Cave Viewer. When I double click on any of the individual surverys or "Edit Cave Survey or File" it comes up with an error " 'Vika&Dave' is not a valid integer value. "
Vika&Dave was listed as the divers that did the survey.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Dave

[sskasser]

It has been a little while since I used Compass last. Last week I entered a bunch of survey data into a friends laptop, we were able to view the cave stick map with no problems. This week he emailed me the MAK and DAT files.

All the surveys are listed under my "File Tree" but I can not open them (Edit Cave Survey or File). When I "Process and View Cave" it only shows the first survey in Cave Viewer. When I double click on any of the individual surverys or "Edit Cave Survey or File" it comes up with an error " 'Vika&Dave' is not a valid integer value. "
Vika&Dave was listed as the divers that did the survey.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Dave

The ampersand character can cause issues in several programs. I'm not familiar with this one specifically, but if you have any way of changing "Vika&Dave" to "VikaandDave", I'm betting this might fix you up.

Good luck!

[DaveP]

Removing the "&" is the first thing I thought of as well. I asked my buddy to remove it from the "Survey Team" line on his computer and resend the MAK and DAT files to me. He said he removed the "&" and resent the files to me but still no luck......

[apitkin]

I think the ampersand is likely to be the problem too.

Another suggestion: open the .dat files (back them up first) with a text editor and remove all the ampersands using the find function. Save it as a text file with the extension .dat. That way you can be sure you've got them all.

It might be worth removing all the .dat files from the .mak file tree and re-adding them to the project. Or even try building up a new project using the modified .dat files.

It's odd that your friend's laptop works and your computer doesn't. Do you have the same version of Compass?

If you still get stuck, try contacting Larry Fish (the author) here:

http://www.fountainware.com/compass/CompassContact/CompassContact.php

There is also a forum on the Fountainware website, and there is a lot of Compass expertise on the cavechat.org board in the Survey/Cartography section.

Good luck.


Andy

[DaveP]

I will keep working at it. Both of us are using the newest version of Compass, I also tried it on my older version of compass with the same problem.

Thanks,
Dave

[DaveP]

Thanks Guys!

Andy,
I was able to open the DAT files using excel and sure enough my buddy missed a "&". I removed the "&" using excel and saved the file and reopened it using Compass. The "Vika&Dave" error went away but then I had a few errors where excel moved a couple of stations, I manually fixed the stations and all is good.... that will teach me to use "&" !!

Thanks,
Dave

[apitkin]

Glad it worked.

Larry Fish designed it from the start to use simple text files that could be edited in case of problems. It also means that just a straight printout of the file can be used for data storage or other purposes. That is one of many reasons why it is so widely used. For me the killer application is to be able to export kml files directly for looking at in Google Earth. Before that it was hard work to make accurate overlays.