(054) Improvement (09/09/10/MIW):  Text that is plotted vertically within two-dimensional striplogs (i.e. text angle equals zero or 180) is not centered vertically.

(053) Bug Fix (09/09/10/MIW):  The program no longer attempts to "wrap" angled text within two-dimensional striplogs.  More specifically, it the text angle is set to anything other than 90, it will not be "wrapped" (i.e. split into multiple lines).

(052) New Feature (09/09/10/JPR):  A new program titled "Lease Map For Google Earth" has been added to the Utilities / Map / Land Grid sub-menu.

This program reads lease descriptions from the Utilities datasheet and creates lease maps that are plotted within Google Earth.

In addition, each lease can be clicked on within Google Earth to view miscellaneous information from the Utilities datasheet.

Here's how it works ...

Create or import a datasheet that contains the following columns (in any order);

• Lease Caption:  This is the lease title that will appear within the Google Earth map.

• Meridian:  This is the principal or "central" meridian for the township in which the lease resides.

• Range:  This is the range (e.g. 62W) for the lease.

• Township:  This is the township (e.g. 14N) for the lease.

• Section:  This is the section that contains the lease.

• Location:  This is the legal description for the lease.  Acceptable formats include quarter/quarter (e.g. SW/SE), "All", and lot numbers.

• Color:  This is the color that will be used when plotting the lease within Google Earth.

You can add any number of additional columns that can be incorporated into the information box that pops up when a user clicks on a lease midpoint within Google Earth.  These additional columns may also be used as alternate labels.  For example, you might want to use the column labeled "Price / Acre" or "Lease Date" as the title as shown by the following examples;

Select the Utilities / Map / Land Grid / Lease Map for Google Earth option from the main RockWorks menu and you will be presented with the following menu;

Menu Options:

• Input Columns:  These are the required fields or columns as previously described.

• Output (KMZ) File:  This is the name of the KMZ file that will be created by the program.  If the Launch Google Earth option at the base of the menu has been checked, this file will be automatically loaded into Google Earth.  Otherwise, you'll need to manually use the File / Open option within Google Earth to view the output from this program.

• Folder Name:  This is the title that will appear as the group heading for the leases within Google Earth.  This title can also be changed within Google Earth.

• Columns To Include Within Information Box:  The program will include all of the information starting at the "Starting Column" and ending at the "Ending Column" when creating the information box that pops up within Google Earth when the user clicks on the special symbol at the center of a lease.  In the following example, the "Starting Column" was set to the "Acres" column and the "Ending Column" was set to the "County" column.  As a consequence, the fields that are shown within the information box are limited to Acres, State and County.

• Include Legend:  This option will paste the designated "Legend File" (a raster image of your choice/making) at the lower-left corner of the Google Earth display.  This particular bitmap legend was created with the Windows Paint program.

• Launch Google Earth:  If checked, the program will automatically load the designated output file into Google Earth upon completion.

Caveats:

• The legal-to-longitude/latitude conversions are based on the LandBase file which in turn is based on the BLM's Jeffersonian Land Grid Database; warts and all.  The map below depicts the coverage for the LandBase file.

• The leases are plotted as simple polygons based on four corner-point vertices.  These vertices are based on whatever points are farthest to the southwest, northwest, northeast, and southeast section points within the LandBase database.

• Leases that contains more than one parcel, such as the western half or a section and the southeastern quarter must be split into multiple rows.

• Lot conversions are limited to;

  •  lots 1 through for 4 for sections 1 through 5,

  • lots 1 through 7 for section 6, and

  • lots 1 through 4 for sections 7, 18, 19, 30, and 31.

(051)   New Feature (09/08/10/JPR):  A new program titled "Volcanic Rocks (Nb/Y versus Zr/TiO2)" has been added to the Utilities / Statistics / Classify menu. 

This program generates Nb/Y versus Zr/TiO2 scattergrams based on whole rock trace elements in conjunction with a volcanic rock classification overlay (Winchester, J. A., and Floyd, P. A., 1977, Geochemical discrimination of different magma series and their differentiation products using immobile elements, Chemical Geology, vol.20, pp.325-343.).

The Nb/Y versus Zr/TiO2 program also classifies samples based on the polygon overlay and stores the results within a designated column within the Utilities datasheet.  This is accomplished by checking the box labeled "Classify Points" within the menu and clicking on the "Process" button.  If an xy point falls within a polygon, it is assigned a classification name that is associated with that polygon.  If a point is not located within a polygon, the cell will be left blank.

These new classifications, along with the original data may be subsequently exported or copy/pasted into another application (e.g. Access, Excel, Word, etc.).

Note: The actual classifications are based on closed polygons as opposed to the open polygons that are depicted within the default output.  To view the true classification polygons (albeit ugly - as shown below), check the box labeled "Classification Polygons".

(050)   New Feature (09/08/10/JPR):  A new sub-menu titled "Classify" has been added to the Utilities / Statistics menu.  This menu provides access to a suite of programs that generate specialized classification programs.  These programs also classify samples based on polygons associated with the diagrams and store the results within a designated column within the Utilities datasheet.

(049) Improvement (09/07/10/JCJ) :  The assay style import when used to import Stratigraphy tops was tedious to use due to successive selection of the grid’s drop down list to choose the stratigraphic layers, especially when importing both tops and bottoms.  The dialog has been changed to use a list box instead of a the drop down list and has a button to access the Stratigraphy Types Table to easily add new types.  The new list box allows for drag and drop of the stratigraphic layers.  This improvement also applies to imports for I-Data, P-Data, I-Text, P-Text and T-Data.

(048) Improvement (08/27/10/JCJ) :  The Borehole Manager / P-Data / Analyze / Gamma to Grade program will now test the borehole location variables (i.e. DeadTime, KFactor, WaterFactor and CasingFactor) to ensure they are not blank.  This, of course, assumes that the user has elected to use these files - as opposed to defining them within the main Gamma-to-Grade menu.

(047) New Feature (08/26/10/MIW) :  The Utilities / File / Import / DXF-to-ASCII program now includes an option for interpolating / adding extra points along a line based on a user-defined distance. 

This new capability is designed for users who are importing DXF files that represent contours.  Specifically, these files often include contours that do not have intermediate points along long straight contours.  As a consequence, there would be no XYZ points extracted between the far-apart vertices thereby resulting is bad models when using these XYZ points to generate grid models.  The most common example involves converting DXF maps of open pits to grid models.

This change applies to Lines, Polylines and LWPolylines.

(046) New Feature (08/26/10/MIW) :  The Utilities / File / Import / DXF-to-DataSheet program now includes an option for interpolating / adding extra points along a line based on a user-defined distance. 

This new capability is designed for users who are importing DXF files that represent contours.  Specifically, these files often include contours that do not have intermediate points along long straight contours.  As a consequence, there would be no XYZ points extracted between the far-apart vertices thereby resulting is bad models when using these XYZ points to generate grid models.  The most common example involves converting DXF maps of open pits to grid models.

This change applies to Lines, Polylines and LWPolylines.

(045) Bug Fix (08/25/10/JCJ) :  DBF imports and exports (and therefore Shapefile imports/exports) no longer use the Jet engine, meaning that these programs now support Windows 7 and they also run much faster.