2D Striplog Dimensions Changing Between Projects

[Guest Molly]

A RockWorks15 user recently asked:

It seems whatever we choose for the width of a column, say for example lithology, it ends up with a different width each time we start a new project. This makes it difficult to export the plot to CAD as the vertical/horizontal scale must be intact. Do you have any suggestions? What exactly does the width setting for the column represent? We saved an RCL-file with our settings for 2D plots where the width of all columns are set to 0.3 and left margin 0.1. When starting a new project, importing boreholes and importing our RCL-file, the resulting striplog has columns 3.2 meters wide. Next project columns are 17.96 meters wide. It seems I'm missing out on something important here?

This is a really good question.

The column width is defined as a percentage of the diagonal extents of your project. If you view the project statistics (checking Show Advanced Options at the top of the project dimensions pane) you'll see that the program has computed the 3D diagonal extents of your project. A log column with a width of "1" should be 1% of that number. This sizing scheme is shared by almost everything in RockWorks: log column widths, contour label text sizes, lithology legend heights, etc.

We've scaled our graphic items in this way so that a cross section extending across a large project area will scale the same, relatively, as a cross section extending across a small project area. Your contour map labels for big-project maps will scale the same, relatively, as those for small projects. Your 3D logs will scale the same, relatively, between big and small projects. And so on. Most of the diagrams created in RockWorks are project-sized, so this works well.

Where the complication occurs is for individual striplogs. Striplog size settings are shared between logs-in-sections and single logs. But in single logs, since they are individual diagrams whose diagram extents are not in the context of the size of the project, then a lithology column with width = 1 will be much fatter in a log from a big project than a small one.

For this reason, we've added an override to the program. In the Tools | General Preferences menu there is a Diagram Scaling heading. There, you can set the scaling to be "Based on XYZ Coordinates" (the 3D diagonal, default), "Based on XY Coordinates" (the 2D diagonal - not taking project depth into account), or "User Defined". You can try using the latter item for all of your projects, to define the constant upon which all of the diagram size settings will be based. For example, if your lithology logs at a width of 0.3 look great for Project-A whose 3D Diagonal extent is "5000", then try using that as the user defined constant in another project.

Just be warned that while this works great for keeping single striplogs consistent in size between projects, you may need to change it back to variable-sizing for project-size diagrams such as maps and cross sections, 3D scenes, etc. If you are using a lot of RCL scripts, you could include this DIAGRAM_UNIT_SCHEME variable in your scripts, to adjust the scaling scheme between logs and all the other diagrams.

Molly Mayfield

RockWare Inc.