Caverot displays .3d files on screen and allows you to manipulate the view to understand the cave. Aven is a GUI caverot replacement which supports most of caverot's mouse and keyboard controls but offers many additional features.
The DOS version of caverot for 286 and earlier machines works with a wide range of graphics cards, and typically provides resolutions up to 640x480. Usually two copies of the screen are used, and one is drawn on while the other is displayed, to give smoother animation. Where the hardware does not allow this you may notice a flickering or flashing during movement which since you can see the screen being redrawn.
The standard DOS version can work with higher resolution screen modes, and always draws into a buffer which is then copied to the screen. It tries to pick a suitable screen mode, but if this fails you can bring up a dialog to choose a screen mode from by using the --mode-picker command line option.
The RISC OS version will pick the highest resolution screen mode that it can use two copies of the screen in, and that will work on the monitor in use. It will also use three bank animation for an even more flicker-free display if there is enough RAM.
CAVEROT reads in the data and then displays a help screen listing the control keys/mouse buttons. Hitting a key gives the default view. This is a plan scaled to fit on the screen, with no labels or station crosses. The view can be panned, rotated, zoomed, tilted, or set spinning. This should be fast enough to be almost instant with all but the largest surveys on the slowest of hardware. Pressing H at any point will give you the help again. Escape exits the program.
Caverot can read in multiple data files and display them in separate colours.
The syntax is given above. E.g. caverot -c2,6 cave.3d surface.3d would display cave.3d in colour 2 and surface.3d in colour 6. If you do not specify colours, a predefined set is used.
Colour values range between 0 (black) and 255 (white) - experiment to find which colours you like.
Note that there is no perspective in the view. This means that it is impossible to tell which way round a cave is rotating, or whether you are viewing something from behind, or in front. So if you think the direction of rotation in wrong, or changes as you watch, this is just your brain being confused, not a bug!
The best way to move the cave is with the mouse. If you hold down the right button then the cave is dragged when you move the mouse. If you hold down the left button, then the cave is rotated if you move left or right, and zoomed if you move up and down. If your mouse has a middle button (and it is recognised by your mouse driver) then you can use it to tilt the cave.
By default the mouse moves the cave, but if you press Ctrl-R, then the mouse will move the viewpoint instead (i.e. everything will go in the opposite direction. This seems more natural to some people.
P and L select Plan and eLevation respectively. Changing between plan to elevation is animated to help you see where you are and how things relate. This animation is automatically disabled on slow machines to avoid user frustration.
Apostrophe ', and Slash / tilt up and down respectively. Tilt goes 180 degrees from plan view to a view from directly below (upside down plan).
Enter starts the cave spinning, and Space stops it. The speed of rotation for this, and tilt, is controlled by Z and X.
Crosses and/or labels can be displayed at survey stations. Ctrl-X toggles crosses and Ctrl-N station names. Ctrl-L toggles the display of survey legs.
By default, labels and crosses are not redrawn during movement, to improve responsiveness. With a small cave, or a fast computer, you can enable redraw of everything during movement with Ctrl-A. Ctrl-O toggles whether all names are displayed, or only non-overlapping ones.
Delete is useful if you get lost - it resets the scale, position, and rotation speed, so that the cave returns to the centre of the screen. There are also keyboard controls to use instead of the mouse - Shift helps here as it accelerates all movements:
Z, X : Faster/Slower Rotation R: Reverse direction of rotation Enter, Space: Start and stop auto-rotation Ctrl-Cursor Left, Ctrl-Cursor Right: Rotate cave one step clockwise/anti-clockwise Ctrl-Cursor Up , Ctrl-Cursor Down: Higher/Lower Viewpoint ] , [: Zoom in/Out U, D: Set view to Up/Down N, S, E, W: Set view to North, South, East, West Delete: Reset to default scale, rotation rate, etc P, L: Plan, Elevation Cursor Left, Cursor Right: Pan survey Left/Right (on screen) Cursor Up, Cursor Down: Pan survey Up/Down (on screen) Ctrl-N: Toggle display of station names Ctrl-X: Toggle display of crosses at stations Ctrl-L: Toggle display of survey legs Ctrl-F: Toggle display of surface legs Ctrl-A: Toggle display of All/skeleton when moving O: Toggle display of non-overlapping/all names Ctrl-R: reverse sense of controls Escape: quit program Shift: accelerates all movement keys H: help screen giving these controls |
A little experimentation should give a better understanding of how this works.
There is an auto-resizing scale bar on the left side of the screen. This varies in length as you zoom in or out. The current length is given just below the bearing. In the top left corner the current direction of view (for elevations), or direction up the screen (for plans) is displayed. In the top right is a compass pointer showing which way is North, and in the bottom right is a clino pointer showing the angle of tilt.