Ariane's Line Discussion

[SuPrBuGmAn]

After discussion from my Compass experiences, I had a couple of suggestions to use Ariane's Line, which is a program designed by a cave diver, for cave divers(although it works for dry cavers too). You can see the spur of this discussion here http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showt...rt-plot-to-kml



Anyway, I downloaded the program(its free) and there are video tutorials to get you started. Its very user friendly and a far more attractive(visually) program on the screen. I like it, you can throw your coordinates in fast and check out a map in minutes without all sorts of conversions and seperate viewers having to pop up.

The only reason I even dicked with Compass was for the availability of Google Earth KML exportation. However, its a PITA and apparently required fixed position coordinates to be in UTM configuration(WTF?). Surely there's a way around that nonsense. Compass is really not very intuitive to begin with, but eventually I got what I wanted(with a slight difference(75') from where I wanted the point fixed, and where it actually overlayed... no idea why that happened like that.)


Ariane's Line makes Google Earth overlays easy, very easy, however I don't like that it also throws up there little advertisement on my GE screen. Is there an option to ditch that? I really like that Ariane uses a simple decimal degree GPS configuration.

Compass .DAT files export over to Ariane(atleast for viewing), but I can't seem to edit the exported information, which would be OK, but it didn't export the fixed point GPS coordinates - and didn't seem to allow me to edit them back in through Ariane. Is this possible, or is this something that I simply can't do?




I haven't done a full project on Ariane yet, but looking forward to running it through. It may end up with me completely junking Compass into the trashcan.

[mdax]

one cool part about arianes line is that you don't have to export to earth.
Within the map tab,under data filter, select the terrain button on the right hand tool bar. It will import the earth/satellite graphic and you can toggle whether you see the comments, station number, data (az, length, depth)...as well as the size of the text descriptor.
However remember to turn off the terrain background if you later export to earth as the background will export and that isn't what you'd probably want.

You may have to save the imported compass .dat file into a ariane project, however the data should be editable by going to the station tab, select the project and right click on the entry, select "Edit".

[mdax]

you can also turn off the ariane graphic overlay in earth
When in earth, expand the folder for the exported cave, it defaults to a temporary place
The bottom most icon looks like a couple rectangles, disable the check box and the ariane graphic will be removed.

[SuPrBuGmAn]

I would actually want a .kml file for Google Earth, something I could share(with who I want, not everyone), and something thats standard on GE without having to do work with any other program but GE itself.


I tried editing(.DAT file) via the station tags last night, couldn't get it to work... I think it was bugging a bit, I'll have to try again.

[jlillest]

Compass is really not very intuitive to begin with, but eventually I got what I wanted(with a slight difference(75') from where I wanted the point fixed, and where it actually overlayed... no idea why that happened like that.)

This sounds like it could be a datum error. The most common datums for cave survey work are NAD27 (topo maps, state plane projection data from the state, etc.) and NAD83/WGS84 (GE and most other online data, GPS points, etc.).

Datum problems may plague you no matter which software you use. If you want help sorting out these things post it up on here and there's plenty of people that can help with it.

-Jon

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Could be, honestly, I'm not edjumakated in this stuff enough to make an intelligant guess on the issue. I wonder if either Compass or GE has different datum settings that I can get everything to cooperate with...

Hrmmm...

Oddly enough, alot of my spring markers came from refferences that the state and FGS make available and they line up fine on GE, so I'm guessing its Compass thats the oddball.

[phillip1]

The cool thing is that up until now there was no cave diving mapping alternative other than Compass and a few super complicated non diver friendly other programs.
Now with Arianne we finally have a specific cave diving friendly survey program and it is packed with really cool features.
The QDT and DRSS teams have been using it now to map Cenote Doggi and a few others and it rocks!!! also we can all share the latest version of the cave map online on the Arianne server and all team members are automatically updated with the latest cave map.

As I have said if you would like a feature added to Arianne send a message to Sebastien and he will program it in.

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Are the maps saved on the Ariane server? Do you the option of saving them to your PC alone, without having to rely on the Ariane server?

Will Ariane export a saveable .kml file or does it just make a Google Earth overlay somehow?

[mdax]

When you select the save as, ariane saves the .tml file wherever you select on your local hard drive.
The online storage is way cool for sharing or when you have multiple computers and use ariane on both.

Once you export to google earth you can right click on the place and save as a .kmz or .kml file.

[LiteHedded]

you can export a .gpx file locally, mat.
then open that with google earth.

I haven't even noticed a save to the cloud option or whatever. everything I have in ariane's is saved locally.

I had the same issue in compass with the kml being about 75' off to the east. ariane's is spot on