What's New in SurvOPT 3.5
The really significant advance in 3.5 is the new turn generator. Previous versions of SurvOPT couldn’t always find good solutions in heavily obstructed areas, and sometimes showed turns that went over or through obstructions.
The new turn generator will always find a legal turn (if one exists) between any two lines, even when there are multiple complex obstructions. This opens up a much wider range of potential solutions and can generate huge efficiency gains in heavily obstructed surveys, in areas like coastlines and producing fields.
Caution!
SurvOPT’s line changes don’t allow for the effect of currents on streamer shape.
Note!
Some operations like opening a heavily obstructed project will take longer, because SurvOPT has to do a lot more work to generate sensible turns. We’re working to make obstructed turn generation faster and faster, but (like searching) it’s inherently very complex, and therefore time consuming!
Here’s a before and after comparison:
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What's New in SurvOPT 3.4
This latest release of SurvOPT includes improvements in coverage view, features to help you keep SurvOPT up to date more easily while monitoring an ongoing survey, and many more import / export options including GIS, Google Earth, and WMS support. Handling of obstructions has been improved, so you can now differentiate easily between national boundaries, no-go zones, fishing areas and any other polygonal or circular area. There are also many other new features.
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New QuickPLOT
QuickPLOT has been completely rewritten but is still simple and easy to use.
QuickPLOT now uses the same flexible and intuitive GUI as SurvOPT, and includes a range of cool tools to make generating preplots faster and more accurate.
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A Really Easy Way to keep SurvOPT Up To Date
We’ve been asked to make it easier for navigators to keep SurvOPT up to date.
If you’re following a SurvOPT shooting plan, you can use the Auto Update Tool to automatically update the vessel’s time and position from the system clock (no configuration required) or nav system.
When acquisition proceeds according to plan, clicking Update Routine Production updates the Scenario to the position of the vessel in the simulator. A simple dialog lets you tweak sequence start and end times and the vessel’s position, and the planned production sequences are turned into actual production sequences. Voila! Your plan is up to date, and you have an instant production log.
When things change and you need to re-plan really quickly, the new Urgent Update and Replan Dialog takes all the complexity out of updating the scenario and helps you make a quick decision about what to do next - Circle? Turn? Continue?
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New Rendezvous and Port Calls
SurvOPT can now optimize planning for port calls, allowing for recovery and redeployment of gear, steaming and time in port. You can also specify a rendezvous with an exact time or a window of any duration, or make an offline detour to anywhere within a helicopter’s safe range
New GIS and Mapping Tools
SurvOPT 3.4 has lots of new tools to work with your GIS systems.
You can now import backgrounds from .jgw files, .tjw files or a Web Map Service (WMS), import Obstructions, Preplots and other objects from shape files and specify the UTM zone with the cool new zone picker.
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New Export Functions
A powerful, configurable Export Engine lets you export elements of any scenario to a variety of formats (including AutoCad, DXF, ESRI Shapefile and Google KML) in WGS84 and a wide range of other ellipsoids.
P1-90 exports are now more flexible and conformant.
Improved Coverage Preview
The “Prototype” Coverage Preview introduced recently is now a fully supported feature.
Preview coverage on both straights and turns, on or off line.
Individually configure coverage parameters for nears, near mids, far mids and fars.
Preview the effects of different binning systems (or “fan mode” shooting) by specifying different ‘coverage widths’ at different offsets.
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Preplot Improvements
4D Preplots can be imported with fixed directions.
To automatically fix preplot directions, simply list the high shot before the low shot of any reversed lines in the P190 file, and SurvOPT will set the direction of each line in the file to start from its first listed point.
Treatment of dogleg lines and multi segment preplots is significantly improved.
P1-90 support is standardised, and exports can include full projection specifications.
There’s a new toolbar button that toggles display of the Full Fold Preplot outline polygon.
There's Prototype support for Preplots that contain arcs.
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Better Preplot Editing
You can now add and edit preplots directly within SurvOPT- It’s so simple and easy that you can lay out a new 2D survey in minutes.
You can also add infill lines as new preplots, or entirely new lines direct from the Scenario Editor.
New Objects
SurvOPT now displays a wider range of polygonal and circular objects such as survey polygons, block boundaries and national borders.
Any polygonal object or circular object can be defined as an obstruction, an exclusion zone, or a range of other designations. All objects can be configured for color, transparency and labelling and you can position objects in front of or behind the survey lines. You can also now select and edit multiple objects simultaneously.
Please note that obstructions from older SurvOPT projects will become Objects of type “Obstruction”. “View Only” obstructions will become Objects of type “Outline”.
GUI Improvements
You can now edit things like obstructions and rendezvous while you look at a search result. For example, drag around a rendezvous and instantly see the effect on the rest of the survey.
You can also view multiple vessels from other scenarios for planning timesharing, WAZ or comparing possible progress.
Other Things
There are also many other tweaks and improvements.
We hope you enjoy SurvOPT 3.4 and look forward to your feedback. If you have any questions or comments, let us know at
