Purging Suspend Shots

This option controls how the program handles suspended shots. Suspended shots occur when a shot does not immediately connect to the rest of the survey. Compass saves these shots so they can be processed later. This process is called "suspending a shot." Suspending shots allows the compiler to process surveys where the shots are not in perfect chronological order. This makes it much easier to organize surveys.

Most of the time, out-of-order shots resolve themselves within a few surveys. As a result, the compiler processes suspended shots whenever the list of suspended shot reaches a predetermined limit of 500 shots.

When the list reaches the predetermined limit, it tries to process all the shots in the list. Shots that are processed are removed from the list, freeing memory space. This process of removing all shots that are now connected to the rest of the survey is called "purging." If the program is unable to purge any of the shots from the list, the list is expanded by 250 shot and processing continues. Thus, the number of suspended shots is only limited by the amount of free memory on the computer.

Even though the compiler can suspend an unlimited number of shots, large numbers of suspended shots will slow processing. As a result, it is often useful to reorganize the survey in a file to make the processing more efficient.

One of the statistics that you can examine is a list of the names of all suspended shots. This information is useful if you are trying to put the surveys in optimal order. When the program purges suspended shots, some of the information is lost. As a result, the compiler allows you to turn off purging.