E. Setting Morph Parameters. The program uses a mathematical process called "Morphing" to adjust the drawings. (Click here for technical details of the morphing process.)  You can control certain aspects of the morphing process by setting the "Morph Parameters."

There are three morphing parameters. The controls to set them appear on at the bottom of the right hand panel. The default parameter will work well under most circumstances, but there are a few situations where you might need to adjust them. Here is a description of each control:

1. Precision. (Range = 0.01 to 1.) This setting controls how precisely elements near a shot line are positioned. Very small numbers force the elements to track very precisely, but it may cause more abrupt warp between one part of the map and another. Larger numbers produce smoother  warping of the map, but items may drift away from the ideal position. I rarely need adjust this value.

2. Distance. (Range = 1 to 100). This setting controls how far the effects of a survey line travels. If the number is small, every element is effect by all the lines. If the number is large, only the nearest lines have any effect on an element.

Changing this is useful under certain specific circumstances. For example, occasionally two nearby lines may pull on the elements between. In the example to the right, an error correction separated the branch passage from the main trend. Elements between the branches tend to be pulled in both direction. When first morphed this passage, the passage wall on both passages were pulled toward the center.

To fix the problem, I increased the value to 14, which cleared up the problem. In theory you could use much larger value, but eventually the program would fail to warp close passages.

3. Length. (Range = 0 to 1) This setting controls the effect of long lines as compared with short lines. If the value is small, then all lines have the effect. If the value is larger, longer lines have stronger effect than short lines. For caving purposes, you generally don't want a longer line to dominate. For example, you wouldn't want the effect of a 100-foot to reach far into the nearby surveys because it might distort an unrelated passage. In fact, we want nearby passages to dominate, so we want to de-emphasize longer passages.