Related Tools

There are also other applications available which can be used in conjunction with Survex.

Therion

Therion interworks with Survex to help produce 2D (and eventually 3D) maps. See the Therion homepage for more information.

Carto is a tool for making cave maps. Carto has two main parts. One is a mechanism for warping digitized sketches to fit the survey data, and combining them to form a composite. The other is a CAD program designed specifically for drawing cave maps. It can import PLT files which you can export from Survex using the cad3d program with the --plt command line option. Written in Java, so should run on any platform with a Java Runtime Environment installed.

See the Carto web pages for more information and downloads.

Tunnel

Julian Todd's `Tunnel' allows the generation of full 3D models of cave passages which can be viewed using a VRML browser. It is written in Java and thus can be run on any platform with a Java Runtime Environment (though this means you'll need to download and install one if you haven't already).

The Tunnel website has download links, but be warned that it is somewhat out of date, and also inaccurate in places (for example, it talks about a *export command with different syntax and semantics to the one which Survex actually implements).

Despite what those pages say, the source code is available (the module name is "TunnelX" - note the mixed case, there's also a module with an all-lowercase name which appears to be a broken initial check-in).

CaveScript

CaveScript is an XML based case survey data format developed by Michael Lake. The ultimate aim of the project is to write a cave mapping program for producing beautiful cave maps on a computer, but the current stage is rather more experimental.

See the CaveScript web pages for more information and downloads.

Rosetta Stal

The Rosetta Stal was originally written by Taco van Ieperen and more recently updated by Garry Petrie. It is an tool which allows survey data to be converted between several cave survey software packages. It's partially open source - the routines to read and write WinKarst files are only supplied as a precompiled library. It requires Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, or XP. Survex support appears to be limited to converting from Survex to other packages.