Although SurvOPT’s basic operation can be learned in just a few minutes, SurvOPT has a wide range of features to answer almost any planning, design or optimization question.  

The first step in SurvOPT is the New Survey Wizard.

The New Survey Wizard lets you quickly create a new SurvOPT project. It guides you through importing preplot lines, specifying the acquisition configuration and vessel performance and entering general information. The final step in the wizard lets you specifying costing information, infill rates and mobilization.                         

Once the project is created, SurvOPT operates in one of three modes, called the Scenario Editor, the Planning Simulator and the Production Reviewer.

The Scenario Editor lets you edit any aspect of the survey project. Using an intuitive interface, it lets you edit the survey lines, import information about completed sequences, add obstructions, specify tides or currents and generally build an accurate model of the survey project.

If you add Obstructions such as rigs or reefs, SurvOPT will work out which sections of each preplot cannot be acquired conventionally, and will generate Undershoot Lines over the impossible sections.

The Scenario Editor also lets you specify Line Requirements. You can set line directions and priorities, set Tide, Feather or Current constraints on individual lines, and generally tell SurvOPT exactly how each line should be acquired.

Finally, you can specify a times and locations for Rendezvous like helicopter crew changes, and set Time Constraints on some or all lines to allow for timesharing, weather, vessel traffic and maintenance.

Once the scenario is ready, the Search Engine uses a powerful set of evolutionary algorithms to find efficient ways to complete the required lines.

The Search Engine includes a range of settings that let you alter the weighting given to different objectives. For example, you can increase short term production, penalize ‘teardrop’ turns, or decrease the weighting given to priority lines.

The Planning Simulator lets you browse and preview the plans found by the search engine. You can sail the vessel through the entire survey and see where the vessel will be at any time. If you’ve provided information about tides and currents, you can see how these change over time in the Tide, and Current Displays, and preview feather conditions shot by shot.

The Planning Simulator includes a wide range of displays. The Costing Display gives a detailed breakdown of costing based on minute by minute Time Use, Shots, Area and Distance. The new Activity Table gives a calendar of expected time use, including costing for each entry. The Statistics Display gives a summary of time use including breakdowns by line type, and includes an unbeatably accurate value for average line change duration. The Sequences Table gives detailed information about every sequence in the plan.

If the Survey is underway or completed, the Production Reviewer lets you replay and analyse how the survey has gone. You can sail the vessel over each production sequence and review time use in detail. The Vessel Calibrator will analyse vessel performance and update SurvOPT’s speed and turn parameters to make future planning more accurate. By analysing the difference between actual and expected line change durations, SurvOPT can spot and display long line changes and help you account for lost time. The Line Change Table gives a summary of all line changes.

The new Activity Table lets you see costs associated with all activities. SurvOPT can automatically categorise time use according to rules (such as “all line changes duration longer than 3 hours are downtime”, but you can recategorize any entry. The new Production Cost Display uses the rates you specified to a show a cost breakdown for all recorded production.

To make your work with SurvOPT as pleasant and efficient as possible, the new GUI lets you pan, zoom and rotate the survey. There are a huge number of view options that let you choose what information you can see and how any object is displayed, and you can individually configure what’s shown in each of the tables and displays.

To help you communicate and work with other systems, SurvOPT provides a range of ways to export data. You can sort, order and export information from any table or display, export line information in P1-90, and produce new Autocad or Esri files of Production Plans.

Finally, the new Instant Report feature produces a five page report detailing all the important facts about the survey, including costing and statistics for both completed and planned production.

Finally, SurvOPT comes with three accessory applications:

QuickPLOT is a simple, intuitive application for generating P1.90 preplots over any irregular or obstructed survey polygon. You can use QuickPLOT to construct preplots for a range of different survey scenarios, then analyse and compare them one in SurvOPT.

VesselTrack is a simple, configurable GPS data logger for tracking vessel movement. You can use VesselTrack to keep a position log that you can load into SurvOPT and compare nominal positions with actual ones, particularly on line changes.

Tidalyse is a fast and powerful tool to create tide or current predictions. You can use Tidalyse to analyse your ADCP data to create current predictions that you can use in SurvOPT.