(56) Improvement (12/05/06/JPR):  The high-fidelity algorithm has been rewritten such that cells that contain more than one control point are re-defined such that the node value equals the average of all of the control point values within the cell.

The following graphs depict Krajewskigrams based on a data set with numerous occurrences of cells that contain multiple control points with widely varying z-values.

(55) Bug Fix (12/05/06/JPR):  The "high-fidelity" option that is used by all of the gridding programs no longer generates strange nodes adjacent to cells that contain multiple control points with radically different z-values. 

(54) Bug Fix (12/04/06/JPR):  Vertically exaggerated diagrams are now plotted at the largest possible scale.  The previous version would plot these diagrams at a condensed scale in the upper-left corner of the screen.

(52) Bug Fix (12/03/06/JPR):  The sector-based, inverse-distance grid modeling no longer produces garbled regions for selected data sets with very large coordinate ranges.

(51)  Improvement (12/02/06/JPR):  The Utilities / Grid / Edit program now longer attempts to color-code node values that are set to a null value (-1.0e27).

(50)  Bug Fix (12/02/06/JPR):  The Utilities / Grid / Grids->Stratigraphic Model program now longer plots strange features if an edge node contains a null value (e.g. models that have been clipped).

(50)  Improvement (12/01/06/JPR):  The RockPlot/3D program no longer plots a "trialware" banner when the product is in trial/demonstration model.

(49)   Bug Fix (12/01/06/JPR):  The Help / Download / Printable-User-Manual option now downloads a file called "rw2006_manual.pdf" (as opposed to the older, incorrect file - RW2006_PDF.zip).

(48)   New Feature (11/28/06/JPR):  A new program titled "Grids -> Solid" has been added to the Utilities / Grid menu. 

This program will create a solid model based on a list of grid models.

The basic idea is that all of the nodes between two surface models will be set to a user-defined g-value.  By creating a list of these surface models (aka "pairs"), a layered model can be produced.

This program is similar to the Grids -> Stratigraphic Model except that this program creates a numeric solid model (that can be subsequently manipulated) whereas the Grids -> Stratigraphic Model program just creates a diagram.

(47)   Bug Fix (11/27/06/JCJ):  The forward and backward buttons on the GeoTools help menu no longer generate errors if the user moves backwards beyond the beginning of the file or forward past the end of the file.

(46)   New Feature (11/27/06/JCJ):  When editing the Stratigraphy Type table, if there are formations with the same number for "Order",  the program will now scan for duplicate occurrences of the "order" field (i.e. two different formations with the same "order" field), and warn the user accordingly.

(45)   New Feature (11/27/06/JPR):  The RockPlot/2D / File / Export / DXF program now includes settings that can be used to adjust the pattern densities.

These new settings are identical to those described for item #44 (see below).

(44)   New Feature (11/27/06/JPR):  The RockPlot/2D / File / Options menu now includes settings that can be used to adjust the pattern densities.

All of the pattern-fills within a diagram (and subsequent printouts) will be adjusted such that densities are multiplied by these new, user-specified, settings.

(43)   Bug Fix (11/27/06/JPR):  The RockPlot/2D program no longer varies the pattern densities based on the diagram dimensions.  This means that a short profile will have the same pattern densities as a long profile.

(42)   Cosmetic (11/17/06/JPR):  The "RockWare Utilities" tab (located along the left side of the main RockWorks screen) has been renamed to "Utilities".

(41)   New Feature (11/16/06/JPR):  The Ternary Diagram program (accessed from the Utilities / Stats menu), now includes options for plotting a variety of color-filled (or black and white) classification systems.

These new options will plot a pre-defined diagram in the background with your data points and/or contours in the foreground.  The currently available templates include Folk's (1954) siliclastic classification system, Schlee's (1973 - after Shepard) siliclastic classification system, Shepard's 1954 siliclastic classification system, and the USDA soil classification system as shown within the following diagram:

Note that it is possible to plot the background classification systems as black and white polygons without the color-fill.  It is also possible to independently plot the classification polygon labels.

By adjusting various contour parameters and backgrounds, a variety of interesting effects may be achieved:

Please contact RockWare if you'd like us to add additional classification systems.

(40)   New Feature (11/08/06/JPR):  The contouring menu that is shared by a variety of programs now includes an option for plotting logarithmically spaced contour intervals.

This new capability is useful for plotting data that not well suited for conventional, regularly-spaced contouring (e.g. geochemistry with a high range of z-values).  Consider the following examples:

The image above depicts a grid model that is grossly skewed by some very high values.  Specifically, the bulk of the model is made up of values between zero and 200 while the anomalous regions exceed 10,000ppm.  The following examples depict this data set as a series of conventional, regularly-spaced contour maps.  Notice how the 1ppm contour map shows the spatial variations within the lower levels while the 1000ppm map does not.  Metaphorically speaking, you can either see the trees or the shape of the forest, but not both.

Compare the regularly-spaced contours in the diagrams above with the logarithmically-spaced contour maps below.  Notice how the logarithmically-spaced contours show the lower-level variability without "saturating" the higher regions with contour lines.

Other Considerations:

• Logarithmic contour intervals are based on a base-10 convention.

• Logarithmic contour label intervals are automatically set to 10x increments (e.g. 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1.0, 10, 100, 1000, etc.)

• Decimal places within logarithmic contours are automatically computed.

• Logarithmic contouring should not be used with data that does not vary by an order of magnitude.  For example, do not use it to plot structural contours.  It's primarily intended for geochemical and geophysical data.

• The subdivisions (contours between the labeled intervals) are hardwired to base-10 (see diagram below in which labels have been manually added to unlabeled contours lines - aka "subdivisions").

(39)   New Feature (11/08/06/JPR):  The contouring menu that is shared by a variety of programs now includes an option for omitting the contour lines around regions of with high values based on a user-defined cutoff value.

The following diagram illustrates how a 50-unit contour obliterates the underlying solid-fill color anomaly.  The diagram on the right shows the effect of the new "Skip High Values" option.

(38)   Improvement (11/08/06/JPR):  The RockWare-Utilities / Grid / Edit program now displays the relative node numbers at the top of the menu.

(37)   Bug Fix (11/08/06/JPR):  The contouring subroutine that is used by a variety of programs no longer produces spurious contours and crenulations with grid models that have huge z-ranges in conjunction with the custom contour interval tables.

(36)   New Feature (11/07/06/JPR):  The Grafix / Images / Digitize-From-Bitmap program now includes calibration options that allow the user to digitize diagrams in which the x- and/or y-axes are logarithmic.

This new capability allows the user to digitize data from diagrams in which the x or the y data is plotted logarithmically.  Notice the axis annotation within the following example:

(35)   Bug Fix (11/06/06/JPR):  The Tools / Restore-Menu-Settings option no longer issues an "Unrecognized Command = GRAFTYPE" message.

(34)   Improvement (11/02/06/MIW):  When plotting RockPlot/2D diagrams within the ReportWorks program, the diagrams are now drawn relative to the bottom of the positioning window to minimize the effect of high vertical exaggerations.  In addition, the Y-Offset for RockPlot drawings can now be negative to offset the effect of high vertical exaggerations.

(33)   Bug Fix (11/02/06/JPR):  Two-dimensional striplogs no longer generate an error when plotting I-Data bargraphs for boreholes that have no I-Data.

(33)   Bug Fix (11/02/06/JPR):  Two-dimensional striplogs no longer generate an error when plotting I-Data bargraphs for boreholes that have no I-Data.

(32)   New Feature (11/02/06/JPR):  The Borehole-Manager / P-Data / Analyze / Gamma-to-Grade program now includes an option for entering the "dead time" units as milliseconds (versus seconds and milliseconds).

(31)  Bug Fix (11/02/06/JPR):  The Borehole-Manager / P-Data / Analyze / Resample program no longer generates erratic numbers when the vertical spacing between the input points is irregular.

(30)  New Feature (10/31/06/JPR):  The Grafix / Images / Digitize-From-Bitmap program now includes an option for plotting symbols at the polygon vertices. 

These symbols are useful when digitizing multiple polygons that share common borders (i.e. making sure that the edges don't overlap).

The symbol color is defined by the current "Points" color.

(29)  New Feature (10/27/06/JPR):  The Borehole-Manager / P-Data / Analyze / Resample program now has a suite of options for truncating and/or skipping data outside a specified range.

These options are useful when the original data has not been sampled at regular intervals.  Specifically, the "spline" algorithm that is used to interpolate the new, regularly-spaced data may become overly creative within the regions where there isn't any data in order to produce the least amount of curvature.  These filters allow the user to eliminate this phenomena (if it occurs).  The filters may also be used to simply remove "outliers".  The following examples illustrated some of the filtering capabilities:

• (A)  In this example, the original data was sampled at 1' intervals and the resampling was performed at 0.5' intervals thereby producing an implicit smoothing without loss of accuracy.

• (B)  In this example, the original data was sampled at 1' intervals and the resampling was performed at 2' intervals thereby producing a implicit averaging.  This operation diminishes the accuracy contained within the original data.

• (C)  In this example, the original data was sampled at 1' intervals with 10' gaps between 10' sampling intervals.  The resampling was performed at 1' intervals.  Notice how the splining (curve-fitting algorithm) attempts to minimize the curvature between the blank intervals.  Unfortunately, these curves project the data to a level below zero.  Specifically, the curve on the left ranges between zero and 250, while the curve on the right ranges between -658 and 250.

• (D)  In this example, the original data is identical to example C, however the resampling used a filter (high-pass/low-stop) that truncated values less than zero to a value of zero.

• (E)  In this example, the original data contains an "outlier" at 75' depth that "compresses" the other data.  The curve on the right truncates the outlier (using a high-stop/low-pass filter) thereby displaying the full range of data.

(28)  New Feature (10/26/06/JCJ):  A new program titled "Kansas Geological Survey" has been added to the Borehole-Manager / File / Import menu. 

This program imports Kansas Geological Survey tops data.  It uses the same framework that is employed by the IHS, GDS, and Tobin imports. 

For more information, please click on this link:  http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Magellan/Elog/tif_zip.html

(27)  New Feature (10/23/06/JPR):  The Borehole-Manager / P-Data / Analyze / Gamma-Counts-to-Uranium-Grade program menu now includes an option for defining the dead-time units (i.e. seconds or milliseconds):

This setting applies to constants that are defined within the Location tab as well as universal constants that are defined within the "Defined As Follows" sub-items.

By the way, here's how the program works:

For each depth increment (as defined by the original sampling interval):

1. If the dead-time input units are set to seconds the dead-time is multiplied by 1.0e-6 to convert it to milliseconds.
    

2. The "deadtime_adjusted_counts" are computed by the following equation:
   
      deadtime_adjusted_counts = raw_counts / abs ( 1 - ( raw_counts * deadtime ) )
    

3. Finally, the uranium grade is computed by the next equation:

             uranium_grade = deadtime_adjusted_counts * k_factor * water_factor * casing_factor * ( 1 / interval_thickness )

Next, the data is resampled (via a spline algorithm) at intervals equal to the specified "Sample Interval".  If not for this resampling procedure, the interval_thickness value within the preceding equation would be invalid (i.e. the interval thickness would be greater than the distance between the original points).

This approach assumes that the original raw-count data was sampled at regular intervals (i.e. via a wireline tool that sampled at a constant rate).

(26) Bug Fix (10/20/06/MIW):  Completely clearing the "Swath" edit box when selecting a log profile no longer causes an "invalid floating point error".

(25) New Feature (10/20/06/JPR):  A new program titled "Hanson Aggregates Stratigraphic Thickness Report" has been added to the Borehole-Manager / Stratigraphy / Export menu.

This program creates a RockWare-Utilities datasheet that list the thicknesses of all stratigraphic units for all of the boreholes.

The empty "Key" column is for subsequent classification use within non-RockWare software.

(24) Cosmetic (10/18/06/JPR):  The sample XLS import file ("RockWorks data import.xls") has been updated to include fracture data for use within the stereonet and rose diagram maps.

(23) Bug Fix (10/17/06/MIW):  Changes to polygon within the RockPlot/2D are now applied correctly.

(22) Bug Fix (10/17/06/MIW):  The RockPlot/3D program now properly exports voxel models to DXF if the filtering is turned on.

(21) Bug Fix (10/17/06/JPR):  The Borehole-Manager / P-Data / Analyze / Gamma-Counts-to-Uranium-Grade program now uses the correct Dead-Time when the constants are defined within the menu.

(20) New Feature (10/17/06/JPR):  The RockWorks button that appears within the Windows Taskbar now shows the percentage completed whenever the program is processing data.  Once the task is completed, the Taskbar button title will return to the normal "RockWorks" title.

This new feature comes in handy when processing large data sets.  Specifically, you can open other applications and still keep an eye on how RockWorks is progressing.

(19) New Feature (10/17/06/JPR):  A new program titled "microMODEL" has been added to the RockWare-Utilities / Solid / Import sub-menu.

This program imports ASCII block model data that is exported from the microMODEL (Randall K. Martin & Associates, Inc.) program into a RockWorks solid model.

This program imports models that are not necessarily oriented in a North-South/East-West fashion by performing the following operations:

The microMODEL product is owned by Randall K. Martin & Associates.  For more information, please click here -> microMODEL Web Site

(18) New Feature (10/16/06/JPR):  The RockWare-Utilities / Solid / Import / ASCII menu now includes a suite of options for plotting the model after it has been imported.

(17) New Feature (10/16/06/JPR):  The RockWare-Utilities / Solid / Import / ASCII menu now includes an option for assigning a null value (-1.0e27) to undefined nodes.

(16) Cosmetic (10/06/06/MIW):  The Stratigraphy Picker now allows multiple quick picks without generating an "Access Violation" error.

(15) Cosmetic (10/06/06/JPR):  The default principal meridian for the LandGrid programs has been changed from zero to six

(14) Removal (10/06/06/JPR):  The My RockWorks / Frequently Asked Questions option has been removed.  It's now redundant the RockWare User Group Forum (where all of the FAQs have been relocated).

(13) Improvement (10/06/06/JPR):  The Graphix / Images / Digitize-From-Bitmap program now shows an accuracy summary immediately after a 3-point calibration has been completed.

(12) Improvement (10/06/06/JPR):  The Grafix / Images / Digitize-From-Bitmap program now lists the currently-loaded bitmap within the main dialog caption.

(11) Bug Fix (10/04/06/MIW):  The Borehole-Manager / Stratigraphy / Pick-Contacts dialog is now a "modal form", meaning that the user cannot run other items within RockWorks while the main Stratigraphy Picker dialog is open.  This solves some intermittent problems whereby executing other RockWorks components would conflict with the Stratigraphy Picker.

(10) Bug Fix (10/04/06/JPR):  The contour smoothing sub-menu that is used within a variety of menus now scrolls correctly.

Examples of Contour Smoothing:

Notice how the difference between no smoothing is considerable while the difference between 1x and 5x smoothing is negligible.  When in doubt, don't exceed a smoothing factor of 1.  This will minimize the differences between the contour lines and color-filled contours.

(09) New Feature (10/04/06/JPR):  Then Land Grid Table / File / Import Commercial Land Grid Data menus (e.g. IHS, TMC, Tobin, WhiteStar) now include an option for specifying the Principal Meridian (a new program requirement within LandGrid tables).  For more information, see item #8 below.

(08) New Feature (10/04/06/JPR):  Then Land Grid Table / File / Interpolate Land Grid Coordinates menu now includes an option for specifying the Principal Meridian (a new program requirement within LandGrid tables).

Once selected, this option will display a Principal Meridian map that includes buttons for selecting the appropriate meridian.

(07) New Feature / Requirement (10/04/06/JPR): LandGrid tables now include the meridian as the first column.  This new capability allows a landgrid to include data for more than one meridian.

The sample LandGrid table (land_grid.tab) has been modified accordingly.

If you have older land grid files, you will need to shift all of the columns to the right and enter a meridian within the first column.

(06) Removal (10/04/06/JPR): The Minimize button has been removed from the Borehole-Manager / Stratigraphy / Pick-Contacts menu.

(05) Bug Fix (10/04/06/JPR): The RockWare-Utilities / Map / LandGrid / Section-Map program now labels the sections properly when using a LandGrid table.

(04) New Feature (10/04/06/JPR): It is no longer necessary to specify the column number when specifying I-Data and P-Data tracks within RCL scripts.  Instead, the program now expects to read a string of text that corresponds to the entity title (e.g. Gamma, Benzene).  Note the first line of the following example:

DEFINE: IDATA_SOLID TRACK Benzene
DEFINE: IDATA_SOLID NEW_MODEL_NAME _rcl_04_benzene.mod
DEFINE: STRATABOUND UPPER_FILTER True
DEFINE: STRATABOUND SUPERFACE_GRID A-Horizon_Top.grd
DEFINE: STRATABOUND LOWER_FILTER True
DEFINE: STRATABOUND SUBFACE_GRID Basement_Base.grd
DEFINE: FENCELOC SHOW_MAP False
DEFINE: FENCELOC STYLE 2
DEFINE: PROFILE X1 652660
DEFINE: PROFILE Y1 5535000
DEFINE: PROFILE X2 653600
DEFINE: PROFILE Y2 5535980
DEFINE: PROFILE_MAP INCLUDE False
DEFINE: GENERAL 2D_OUTPUT _rcl_04_benzene_profile.rkw
EXECUTE: IDATA_PROFILE

The appropriate changes have been made to the RCL_04.RCL and RCL_05.RCL sample files.

(03) New Feature (10/02/06/JPR): The RockWare-Utilities / Solid / Filter / Polygon-Clip program now includes options to define the value that will be used as a replacement either within or outside of the polygonal region.  The previous version only allowed the user to specify zero as the interior/exterior replacement value.

A "null" setting will set the nodes inside or outside of the model to a value that RockWorks interprets as "undefined" thereby rendering these regions invisible when displaying the models.  Null values are also excluded from volumetric calculations.

(02) New Feature (10/01/06/JPR): The Borehole-Manager / Striplogs / Single-Log-3D and Multi-Log-3D menus now include a new I-Data fill-style called "Table-Based". 

This new capability allows you to control the I-Data color via a custom "look-up" table as shown within the following example:

The net result is a diagram in which the bargraph colors are determined by the color table.

(01) New Feature (10/01/06/JPR): The Grafix / Images / Rectify-Image program now includes a suite of options for exporting the newly rectified image to either the RockPlot/2D or RockPlot/3D programs.

The following example shows how a subset image has been rotated, clipped and exported as a two-dimensional map, three-dimensional draped map, and three-dimensional floating map.