Compass Sketch-map Editor

The Compass Sketch-map Editor is a specialized tool for preparing sketch-map for use in making finished, professional-quality cave maps. The program prepares sketch-maps for tracing in a digital drawing program such as Inkscape, Canvas, Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. The preparation can be just as useful for manually drawn maps.

The program is designed to deal with the most common problems faced by cave cartographers when processing sketch-maps. Even when sketch-maps are carefully drawn to scale, using protractor and ruler, a sketch-map can never match the precision of the computer survey. In addition, when the image is scanned, additional errors and distortion creep into the image.   As a result, the survey stations and the position of the passages can end up a long way from the correct position. This means the cartographer has to manually adjust and nudge the sketch-map on the fly to trace the passage walls.

In addition, the typical sketch-map usually covers only a few stations. This means that for a single survey, the cartographer may be working with dozens of separate sketches. This is tedious and awkward and slows the map-making process.

To deal with these problems, the Compass Sketch-map Editor allows you scale, rotate, morph and merge your sketches into a single image that covers multiple sketches. The process insures a uniform scaling, rotation and positioning so the sketches will fit together seamlessly. The morphing option adjusts the images so all residual errors are removed and the sketch-maps exactly match the positions of the stations in survey data.