WHAT'S NEW

===========================================================================
Newest
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===========================================================================
8-29-21
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1. Viewer. 5-8-20. In the "Color Sections" and "Color Surveys" pages of
the "Complex" settings, the columns can be resized and the button
associated with each column resize accordingly. 

2. Editor. 5-8-20. Fixed a problem with the survey date where it would
not handle a written month value correctly.

3. Viewer. 5-17-20. Fixed a problem where the 3D Exporter did not correctly handle
Feet when exporting shapefiles.

4. Viewer. 5-20-20. The export of Shapefiles has been improved. First,
I fixed a problem where using Feet as the units of choice caused a 2
meter offset when compared to the same data exported as meters. Second,
I add comments to the exported data, as well as Azimuth, Length and
Inclination where relevant.

5. Editor 5-30-20. Fixed a problem where you couldn't clear flags for a shot.
If you entered a space or tried to delete a flag character, the Editor would
give an error.

6. Viewer. 6-1-20. Fixed a problem with the Viewer where caves with loops
with fixed stations could get a memory error.

7. Project Manager. 10-4-20. Compass now provides statistical
information on all surveyors who have contributed to a project. This includes
the number surveys each person worked on, the total length of surveys worked on
and the number of shots worked on. It also includes graphs that show
the dates each person worked on surveys.

8. Viewer. 1-28-21. The graphs now allow you to selective exclude shot
based on the shot flags.

9. Viewer. 7-8-21. Several improvments to the Animation tool. First,
the interpolations have been improved to make them more linear. Second,
animations can be saved as animated GIFS.

10. Viewer. 7-8-21. The passage model fills allowing filling by distance.

11. Project Manager. 7-13-21. Fixed several problems with the Blunder
detecting column sorting and color coding. 

12. SVG Exporter. 8-29-21. The SVG Exporter can now read and handle Compass
Database features. It can selectively export database features to the SVG File. 

===========================================================================
12-5-19
===========================================================================

1.Editor - 6-29-19. The Editor now understands non-US date formats. For example,
the US date is typically mm/dd/yyyy, where as the format for other countries
might be yyyy/mm/dd.

2. Editor - 7-2-19. The Project Manager now allows tape-uncertainty to be entered
as eithe feet or meters.

3. Project Manager 7-15-19. In the past, when there was a
missing LRUD and there was more than one LRUD for station,
the Project Manager would subsitute the best LRUD for the
missing one. This was not the correct thing to do if the
shot angle was radically different because it wouldn't
looking into the same passage so the LRUD wouldn't be
accurate. The Project Manager now takes into account the
angle of the passage and doesn't substitute LRUDs if the
shot for the substitute is more than 15 degrees from the
shot being subsituted.

4. Project Manager. 5-26-2019. Improved the custom
statistic export to make it more intuitive. Instead of
having two separate pages one for regular statistics and one
for custom statistics, the Custom Statistics options only
appear when th Custom Statistics option is selected.

5. Project Manager. 10-18-19. Fixed another problem with
LRUD handling which caused the Left/Right values to be
swapped at passage junctions.

6. Viewer. 10-18-19. Added a feature which allows the user
to double-click on the cave and pan to and zoom in on the
spot. The zoom is animated which is less confusing than
jumping straight to a new position and magnification. 

7. Viewer. 10=18-19. The Survey finding dialog now displays
both the Survey-list and the Station-List on the same page.
That makes the feature easier to use because you don't have
constantly switch from page to page.

8. Project Manager/Viewer. 10-24-2019. A common data-entry
operation is making changes to the data and then viewing the
result. To do this, you have to reload the cave into Viewer,
which resets all the panning, zooming and rotations. The
Viewer now has the option of reloading a cave without
resetting the pan, zooms and rotations. In addition, there
is a quick-compile button in the Project Manager that
compiles the project without running a new copy of the
Viewer, All you have to do to view changes, is press the
quick-compile button and reload the cave in the Viewer. 

9. Project Manager. 10-24-2019. If a cave has two or more
fixed stations that are connected by a survey, this will
form a loop. Part of the loop is made up of the shots that
connect the fixed-stations and part is made up by an
imaginary line that connects the two fixed-stations. In
other words, only part of the loop is made up of surveyed
shots and part is made of an imaginary shot-line. Compass
now tracks each part of the loop separately. Among other
things, this is useful for determining if a loop is a
natural loop or an artificial loop that only exists because
of fixed stations.

10. Viewer. 10-24-2019. Holding down the control-key,
unconditionally enables drag-mode. This is useful when you
are using one of the Tools, which takes over the mouse. For
example, if you are using the Find-Survey tool, the
mouse-navigation features don't work because the tool uses
the mouse to find surveys and stations. Holding down the
control-key overrides tool, and the program switches to
drag-mode. This makes it easier to navigate while you are
using tools.

11. Viewer. 11-11-19. Fixed a problem the caused the program
to ignore the pen size setting when exporting a bitmap. 

12. Viewer. 11-11-19. The bitmap export option now allows you
to save the image as any of the common bitmap formats including
bmp, jpg, gif, and tif. 

13. Project Manager. 11-20-19. Fixed a problem that caused
the PocketTopo inport to fail.

14. Project Manager. 12-5-19. Fixed a problems where the cut/copy/paste
operation didn't work properly in the Node Editor when the decimal
separator wasn't a period. Also, cut/copy/paste now works with
control-c/control-x and control-v in addition to the button. Finally,
there is a up/down bottons that move a link up or down in the list.



===========================================================================
12-22-18
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1. Viewer - 1-3-18. There are new options for display
loops. Loops can be colored according to the level errors in
the loop. You can also color the non-loop parts of the cave
gray to make it easier to see where the loops are.

2. Project Manager - 1-3-18. The Project Manager allows you
to display a list of shots that include backsight
information. You can selectively display only those items
that have a fore-to-back disagreement greater than a certain
value. This is useful for finding transcription error and
places in the survey that are candidates for resurvey.

3. Project Manager - 5-15-18. The Project Manager now has a
general-purpose import tool that can read text files of
virtually any format and convert them to Compass files. For
example, it can import standard spreadsheet and database
format such as comma-separated files and tab-delimited
files. 

4. Viewer - 6-21-18. The 3D Exporter in the Viewer now
creates a ".prj" "projection-file along with the other
shapefile components. Also, since some programs prefer to
have shapefiles zipped before they can be loaded, you have
the option of creating a zip file that includes all the
component files.

5. Viewer - 12-4-18. The Compass Viewer now has improved passage
modeling. In the past, when there were multiple shots
starting with the same "From" station, the program took the
most recent LRUD as the most accurate. The program now uses
the LRUD associated with each shot, which more accurately
reflects the survey measurements.

6. Viewer - 12-8-10. The Compass Viewer now allow syou to save all
the passage modeling parameters as defaults.

7. Editor - 12-19-18. Fixed a problem in the Editor where the
"Advanced Search" failed to find certain shots at the
beginning of surveys.

8. Project Manager - 12-22-18. Fixed a problem where the project Manager
would not correctly deal with a situation where the fore sight was missing
and the back sight was available.

===========================================================================
9-5-17
===========================================================================

1. Viewer - 12-9-16. Added a feature that allows shots that
have been flagged for exclusion from closure to be
displayed.

2. Viewer - 12-11-16. Added a feature that allows shots that
have been flagged for exclusion from length totals to be
displayed.

3. Viewer - 12-11-16. Fixed a problem where hidden shots
couldn't be excluded from an exported Google Earth KML file.

4. Project Manager - 1-15-17. Fixed a problem with
Spreadsheet exporter where data columns were out of order
and consequently, mislabeled.

5. Sketch Editor - 5-2-17. Fixed a problem where the morph
feature would fail under certain conditions if the survey
had duplicate station position.

6. Cave Editor - 5-5-17. The Editor now allows you to set
the order in which the back-compass and back-inclination are
displayed in the Editor.

7. CaveXO - 5-24-17. CaveXO is now many times faster. Load
speed have increased by more than 5 times. For example, the
new version loads Lechuguilla cave in 6 seconds instead of
the 32 seconds for the previous version. Likewise, the
animation speed is now 8 times faster. This means that the
new version can animate Lechuguilla cave at 16 frame per
second instead of 2 frames per second like the old version.

8. CaveXO - 5-24-17. The old version of CaveXO displayed
station labels with text that was drawn using scaled lines.
This meant that if you were zoomed out, the text was too
small to read and if you were zoomed in, the text could be
too big to read. Also, the labels only faced in one
direction, so you couldn't read them from the side and would
be backwards if you looked at them from behind. In the new
version, the labels are a fixed size, no matter how much you
are zoomed in or zoomed out. Likewise, they always face
toward the front, so they can be read from any angle.
Finally, in the old version, station marks consisted of a
small cube or tetrahedron, which was very small when you
zoomed out and got progressively larger when you zoomed in.
In the new version, station labels stay the same size
whether you are zoomed in or out. They also face the same
direction

9. Viewer. 8-20-17. The Viewer can now selectively display
Survey and Station comments. You can also display a box
around the survey extensts. Finally, you can enter and
display Annotation for each survey station in the cave.

10. Project Manager. 8-25-17. Fixed several problems where
the declination settings, the automatic declination
calculations and the convergence settings didn't work quite
correctly.

11. Project Manager. 9-3-17. Fixed a problem where the
Loop-breaking feature failed to break certain loops where
the closing shot was the first shot in a new survey and the
survey was out of sequence.

12. SVG Exporter. 9-5-17. In past, the SVG Exporter did not
deal with ellipses, rectangles and circles. he new version
morphs or moves ellipses, rectangles and circles depending
on which layer they are in.



===========================================================================
11-28-16
===========================================================================

1. Project Manager - 9-18-15. The Project Manager now
includes shot-flags in the plot file.

2. Viewer - 10-23-15. The Color Surveys List, in the Complex
dialog box now shows survey comments along with the rest of
the information.

3. Viewer - 10-23-15. The Complex features now supports
clipping passage walls based on the extents and survey date.

4. Editor - 11-6-15. In the past, the mouse wheel would not
scroll cursor in the Shot Editor past the bottom of screen.
Now the mouse wheel will scroll the up or down the entire
document.

5. Viewer - 11-6-15. Fixed a problem where the Viewer would
show Stations, Elevation or Shot Parameters labels for
hidden shots. Now they only show when Hidden Shots are
enabled.

6. SketchEditor - 11-30-15. The program now supports saving
bitmap resolutions such as dots/inch or pixels/meter for
BMP, JPG, PNG and TIFF.

7. Viewer - 7-9-16 The KML export option now supports
outputting lines instead of passage model polygons. This
reduces the file size by about seven times, which is useful
for large caves or displaying kml files in applications that
are slow.

8. Project Manager - 9-1-16. The Project Manager now has a
special tool specifically designed to export data to Excel
Spreadsheets.

9. Viewer - 10-22-16. The Viewer now supports selectively
ploting sections and surveys using dotted/dashed lines.
There is also the option of generating custom line patterns.

10. Viewer - 10-22-16. The Viewer now automatically updates
the display whenever a change has been made to the Complex
settings. Computers are now fast enough so that updating the
display takes less than a second, even for largest caves.
The option can be disabled for slow computers.

11. Editor - 11-14-16. The Editor now has tool bar buttons
for reversing the Back Azimuth and Back Inclination. It also
the "Reverse Tool" also supports reversing the Back Azimuth
and Back Inclination.

12. Editor - 11-28-16. Fixed a bug that caused problems
entering the declination values.

13. Editor - 11-28-16. Fixed a bug that prevented the import
of some Pocket Topo files.

===========================================================================
9-6-15
===========================================================================
1. General 1-10-15. The magnetic declination models have
been updated to use the latest data. Compass can now
calculate declinations for any date between 1900 and 2020.
The new data has improved accuracy for dates between 2010
and 2015. The changes apply to the main Compass distribution
package and the Dem Reader.

2. General 2-14-15. The Compass exe-files and installation
programs are now digitally signed to help prevent false
positives by anti-virus programs.

3. Project Manager - 2-14-15. Compass can now import Pocke
Topo files and convert them to the Compass data format.

4. Project Manager - 8-22-15 The Project Manager now has a
tool to make it easier to merge two or more survey files
into a single survey file.

5. Project Manager - 9-6-15. Fixed several problems with the
Pocket Top import.

6. Project Manager - 9-6-15. The Survey Manipulating tool
has several improvements. These include being able to move
multiple surveys at once using the arrow buttons, drag/dorp
and copy/paste. You can also delete multiple surveys at
once. The arrow buttons auto repeat to make moving surveys
quicker

7. Viewer - 9-6-15. The Viewer now allows you to set the
line size for the shot lines, features and the passage walls
separately. These sizes can also be saved as defaults.

8. Project Manager - 9-6-15. The Project Manager now
generates more accurate passage wall models. In the past,
when Compass processed junctions, it used the last LRUD for
all shots radiating from the From station. Now it uses the
LRUD associated with each shot's From station unless the
data is missing. If the data is missing it uses the best
LRUD for that station. 

9. Project Manager - 9-6-15. The "Error Log" in Project
Manager is no longer on a separate page. It has been moved
to the bottom of the main window. This avoids the need to
switch back and forth between the two pages to compile or
look at error messages.


===========================================================================
1-1-2015
===========================================================================

1. Cave Editor (1-6-14). Fixed a problem with the Editor that caused problems reading
old survey files that were missing format information. If the defaults were set for
backsights and the format data was missing, the program would try to read the backsight
data and read past the end of the file.

2. CaveXO (3-19-14). CaveXO now has tool that allows you
calculate passage density, rock volume and rock porosity
more accurately. The feature works by derriving an
adjustable convex-concave hull around the cave. The
convex-concave hull is diplayed in 3D and update in real-time so you can see how
the hull wraps the cave.

3. Project Manager (3-19-14). The Compass Blunder Detection
tool has been improved to make it easier to find the worst
loops in a cave. You can now click on any column in the loop
list to sort the items in the column in ascending or
descending order. This makes it is easy find the worse loops
in terms of the various measures of loop quality shown in
the tool. For example, in the image shown below, the Vector
Standard Deviation error column has been sorted from worst
to best. This put the worst loops a the top of the list. 

4. Project Manager, Viewer (7-6-2014). The Project Manager
now exports the original list of loops used to close the
cave, provide loop statistics and blunder information. This
means the Viewer will show the exact same loops that the
Project Manager shows. The Viewer can also display an
optimized set of loops with minimum length and overlap.

5. Viewer (7-6-2014). The menu system in the Viewer has been
completely reorganized to make it more logical and easier to
use. Since people are used to the old system, they may not
be able to find certain features. To solve that problem, the
help file has an alphabetical list of commands and their
corresponding menu sequence. This list is the second item in
the help file.

6. Project Manager (10-10-2014). Fixed a problem where the second
instrument correction factors were not being applied to the loop
closure process.

7. Editor (10-25-2014). Added a feature to the Editor that
allows you block modify survey stations. It displays a list
of the stations that will be modified as well as any
stations that already have the target name.

8. Project Manager (1-1-2015). The Node Editor now allows
you to Cut/Copy/Past links to and from the Windows
clipboard. This allows you to move links between between
nodes.

===========================================================================
12-17-13
===========================================================================

1. Viewer/3D Exporter (8-29-2012). You now have the option of saving
all the settings in the 3D Exporter in the Compass viewer. Once the settings
have been saves, they become the default the next time the program is run.

2. CaveXO. (11-12-2012) There is now a grid option for the 3D Rose Diagram.
Grid shows the depth of each level of the 3D Rose Diagram.

3. Project Manager. (12-17-12) There is now a statistics option that displays
yearly surveying totals for every years the caves was actively surveyed. This
includes totals for the number of surveys, shots and the total length of the
passage surveyed.

4. Viewer (1-1-13) The viewer now has the option of displaying marks on
the plot of the location of fixed stations.

5. Viewer (1-1-13) The Viewer now allows you to adjust the position of
the Station Labels. This allows you move the station labels away from
other marks and information to make the labels easier to read.

6. Project Manager. (1-28-13) Added an "LRUD Association"
option which can be set for each survey in the Survey Header
section of the Editor. It controls whether the the LRUDs in
the Survey are associated with the From or To Station when
building Passage Models.

7. Editor. (1-28-13) There is an option in the Editor to
block modify selected surveys in a file so can set large
blocks of surveys to either have the LRUDs are associated
with the From or To station.

8. Editor. (1-28-13) There is an option in the Editor to
block modify selected surveys in a file to shift the LRUDs
one shot forward or backwards. This has the effect of
converting a From LRUD to a To LRUD and vice versa. When
LRUDs are shifted forward a zero-length shot is created at
the end of the file to accept the final LRUD. Likewise, when
the LRUDs are shifted backwards, a zero-length shot is
inserted at the beginning of the survey to accept the first
LRUD.

9. Project Manager. (1-28-13) The Project Manager can now
use the Flags associated with each survey to control the
whether the LRUDs are associated with the From or To
stations.

10. Project Manager. (1-28-13) You can override the
survey-level LRUD Flags by changing the settings in the
Project Manager. These "Override Settings" can be saved
either to the MAK file or as the Project Manager Defaults.
The MAK setting have presidence over the Project Manager
defaults. 

11. Sketch Editor. (3-5-13) The Editor has been improved so
it will handle much larger image. This was done changing the
"Undo" feature so it saves the list of Undo/Redo images to
disk rather than memory, freeing up a large amount of memory
to handle the main image.

12. Sketch Editor. (3-5-13) The Editor now support Rubber Banding Line drawing.

13. Editor. (4-3-13) Fixed a problem where garbage binary
data appeared "Flags" column.

14. Sketch Editor. (4-5-13) Improved the resizing and rescaling options and
added more detail to the help files on the process.

15. Project Manager. (4-29-13) In the past, the Project Manager always truncated
error messages at 25. You now have the option to remove that limit and display
an unlimited number of errors.

16. Viewer. (8-10-13). The number of points that can be handled by the 
Animation tool has been increased from 25 to 500.

17. Viewer. (8-12-13). The current Datum setting is now
saved with the user defaults.

18. SVG Exporter. (9-4-13). Fixed a number of subtle problem
with the SVG Exporter which were caused by the various version of Adobe Illustrator.

19. MapToDat. (9-5-13). There is a now a new utility program that allows you
to reconstruct survey data from paper or scanned maps.

20. Project Manager. (9-19-13). The Project Manager now has the option
to override individual shot flags. This allows you to do things like view
shots that have been excluded at the shot level.

21. Viewer. (9-20-13). More Complex Options are saved to file. 

22. Viewer. (12-2-13). You can now adjust the position of station labels in both
the X and Y directions separately. You also have control over the shot line width.

23. Project Manager (12-3-13). The Statistic Feature now
displays a list of Duplicate shots.

24. Compass (12-17-13). Compass now supports setting correction factors for
the backsight Compass and Inclinometer.

===========================================================================
8-25-2012
===========================================================================

1. Viewer. (5-24-11). Fixed a problem with exporting very
large Windows Meta Files (WMF and EMF). The cave data would be
missing from the image. The same problem could also occur with
very large bitmaps.

2. Viewer. (5-25-11). Fixed a problem where some settings would lost
in the Complex Dialog Box, if you closed the box. These settings are now
preserved. I similar problem was fixed in the Save Image dialog.

3. Project Manager (6-3-11). Fixed a problem that occurred
when a the user was working on a "Single File," as opposed
to a Project. Normally, you are not supposed to be able to
edit a File Node when working on a "Single File." The node
data is saved to the Project File, so editing a node without
a project makes no sense. The "Node Editing" buttons and
menu items are grayed out when you are working in simgle
file mode. However, double clicking on a file node
erroneously allowed the user to edit the node. If you the
user then tried to us the file, he/she would get an error. The
program now won't allow a node to be edited by double
clicking from "Single File" mode.

4. Project Manager. (1-9-2012) The declination options have
been simplified and clarified so they are easier to
understand. Originally, there were two options, "Use
Declinations" and "Calculate Declinations" that could
enabled or disabled independently. Now there are three
mutually exclusive options: 1) "Don't use Declinations, " 2)
"Use Entered Declinations, " and 3) "Use Calculated
Declinations." 

5. Viewer. (1-21-2012) You now have the option of display the LRUD
distance values on screen in association with the Passage Wall Marking feature.
This is helpful in passage-wall tracing operations.

6. Project Manager. (1-31-2012) The Custom Export option in the Statistics
section now has the option of exporting the LRUD values for each station.

7. Project Manager. (1-31-2012). The Project Manager now
handles LRUDs differently. The compiler normally overwrites
the LRUD for a station every time it sees a new reference to
that station. This could lead to problems where the last for
a station was LRUD omitted in the survey data. This would
cause a perfectly valid LRUD to be overwritten by a missing
value. The Compiler now checks the new value to make sure it
is not a missing or undefined before overwriting the LRUD.

8. Viewer (6-10-2012) There is now the option to save all
Complex values and settings. This allows you to build a
complex display and then restore it later can restore the
display without going through the task of manually setting
each individual option.

9. DEM Reader (8-25-2012). The Reader now has the option of
setting the location of the link between the cave and the surface model
directly in Long/Lat or UTM. Before you had to do this manually, by visually
positioning the link on a contour map of the terrain.
===========================================================================
3-19-11
===========================================================================

1. Cave Editor (1-31-10). Fixed a problem in the Editor
where if you used the Geographic Calculator to calculate
Declination, any changes you have made to the header would
be lost.

2. All Programs. (1-31-10). The Geocalculator was updated to
include the magnetic declination models through 2015.

3. SVGExporter. (3-20-10). There is new Cartography tool to
help you generate finished maps from Compass. The
SVGExporter allows you to export SVG map to programs like
Inkscape or Illustrator. The SVG Exporter also allows you to
merge new data into an existing map. It also allows you to
update an existing map with new data. The program handles
moving, rotating, scaling and warping of your existing maps
to handle changes in the data, new surveys, resurveys,
blunder removal or just changing the map format.

4. Sketch Map Editor. (3-20-10). There is new Cartography
tool to help you generate finished maps from Compass. The
Sketch Map Editor allows you to edit your sketch map images
to make them easier to use. You can trim them, adjust the
contrast, remove smudges, scale and rotate the sketches. You
can also merge multiple maps into a single image that is
easier to handle and load into drawing programs for tracing.
Finally it will warp the image so the stations marks exactly
match the positions of in the actual plot file.

5. Cave Editor. (8-31-10) There is now an option to copy the
Survey List to the clipboard. This includes comments and
date, in the order they are displayed.

6. Project Manager. (9-8-10). Fixed a problem where the
compiler would not accurately calculate the magnetic
declination based on the date.

7. Cave Editor. (9-11-10). Made the columns in the editor
resizeable. You can adjust the column width by dragging the
seam between columns at the top of the editor screen.

8. SVG Exporter. (10-7-10). Fixed a problem with the Scale
Bar in Metric mode.

9. Viewer, CaveXO. (10-7-10). Fixed a problem with the LRUD
orientation on Vertical shots.

10. Project Manager. (1-1-11) Fixed a problem with the SEF
import where shots with missing "To" stations were not
handled properly.

11. Project Manager. (2-17-11) Fixed a problem in the
Geo-Calculator where the UTM convergence angle is incorrect
for any location East of 0 Degrees longitude. This means
there was no problem with North and South America, Western
England, Spain and Western Africa. There was a problme for
the rest of Europe, Asia, Australia, Japan and the Pacific
Islands.

12. Viewer. (3-1-11) Fixed a problems where part of the
"User Tools" menu was cut off.

13. SVG Exporter. (3-19-11). This is a major new released of
the SVG Exporter. It contains about 12 new compatibility improvement
that deal problems caused by Illustrator and Inkscape. There are
also improved tools for dealing with corrupted files and repairing
SVG anomalies.

===========================================================================
12-22-09
===========================================================================

1. Project Manager (3-26-08). I have made several
improvements to the way Compass handles the creation of new
surveys. In the past, the editor took its default format
from current survey format. This could cause problems when
you wanted to save other default, but not change the default
survey format. As a result, the Editor now has a separate
option that allows you to explicitly set the default format
for new files. This is the only way you can set the default
format. (As a result, you will need to set and save the
setting the first time you use the new version.)

In addition, the Project Manager now takes its default
setting from the Editor's settings when it creates a new
files. 

2. Project Manager/Viewer (7-18-08). There is now an option
to display cave maps in Google Earth by exporting KML files.
In addition, the Geo-reference information entered in the
Project Manager is now propogated through out all the
programs.

3. All Programs. (9-2-08) Fixed a problem with all programs
where some objects, especially grids, were the wrong size if
you ran the video display at a resolution other than 96 dpi.
One side effect of the problem was that some buttons and
other objects on the screen would be invisible because they
would be pushed off the screen or covered up.

4. CaveXO. (9-2-08). The OpenGL version of CaveX now has
more sophisticated lighting and materials controls. For
example, you can now setup 8 lights instead of the original
1.

5. Viewer (9-7-08). Cleaned up the Complex dialog to make it
easier to use. The window is now resizeabe; the grids so
they expand as the window expands, which displays more
items. I also improved the way the selecting and
highlighting works.

6. Project Manager (9-7-08). Cleaned up the Fixed Stations
dialog box to make it easier to use. The window is now
resizeable; the Fixed-Station grid expands with the window
to display more items and the columns are now resizeable.

7. Cave Viewer (2-24-09). Added a feature that displays the
station coordinates next to the station.

8. Cave Viewer (2-25-09). Added features that allows the
station coordinates to be displayed as either UTM, Long/Lat
Degrees or Long/Lat Degrees, Minutes and Seconds.

9. Project Manager (4-21-09). Compass now has the option of
handling situations where two or more fixed station lay in
different UTM zones.

10. Project Manager (5-3-09). Improved the Geocalculator
world map with a higher resolution image of the earth. It
will also display UTM zones and/or Longitude and Latitude
line on the map. Finally, it also allows zooming the map for
more resolution.

11. Project Manager (5-4-09). Cleaned up several human
interface issues to make the program easier to use. The Node
Editor now does not convert between Meters and Feet unless
specifically configured to do so. You can also double click
on Tree Item to make it easier to perform tasks such as
editing, compiling and entering fixed stations.

12. Project Manager (7-7-09). There is now an option to
disable the use of declinations. This is useful if you want
to create a map referenced to magnetic north.

13. Viewer (8-27-09). Fixed a problem where extraneous lines
would appear in the plot if some of the Fill Passage Models
were enabled.

14. Project Manager (10-7-09). Fixed a problem where the
survey statistics could be altered by suspended shots. For
example, the lengths individual surveys in the survey
statistics section could be off by the difference in length
between the actual shot and the suspended shot.

15. Project Manager (10-8-09). The Project Manager now saves
a default setting for the "Compile When" and "Close When"
options. That means that you can set the program to default
to Always Close and Always Compile the program.

16. Viewer (10-8-09). The Viewer now has the option of
opening "Maximized" so it fill the whole screen.

17. Viewer (10-8-09). The Station Labeling options in the
Viewer now apply to Elevation, Station Coordinates and Shot
Parameter options. For example, this means that you can set
Station Coordinates to display every N-number of shots so
the display is less cluttered.

18. Viewer (10-12-09) Fixed a problem where if you right
clicked on the a survey and chose to use the Edit feature,
the Viewer would close when the Editor opened. The same
thing would happen in you tried to edit the survey from the
"Find Survey" dialog. 

19. Editor (12-06-09). Improved the "Survey Search" option
so the dialog box is not modal and stay on top. This allows
you to find a survey and edit it without closing the dialog
box.

20. Viewer (12-11-09). The Viewer now supports coloring the
passage modeling in the Complex Plotting Feature. 
 In the past, the Plot Sections and Plot Surveys only colored
the center line when the passage option was enabled. Now the whole
passage can be colored if Passage Modeling mode is set to 3D Polygon.

21. Viewer (12-14-09). The Viewer now supports highlighting
loops in the plot. You can individually select each loop for
display. The program uses an optimizing algorithm that finds
the set of loops with the shortest individual loop lengths.

22. Project Manager (12-22-09). Fixed a problem that occurred when
you had a mixture of Links and Fixed stations. The Links, which cannot
be georeferenced, were setting the zone to 31 during compilation. This
caused a problem exporting KML files.

===========================================================================
12-30-07
===========================================================================

1. Cave Editor. (2-20-07) The Editor buffer has been
increased from 5000 to 10,000 shots. This was done to handle
those rare instance in which you have more than a few
hundred shots in a survey.

In general, you should not have more than a few hundred
shots in a survey. The typical survey team can only survey a
few hundred shots in a day, so the only way you can have
more the a couple hundred shots, is if you combine the
surveys of more than one team or more than one date. This
defeats the purpose of splitting the cave into separate
survey's. You should always start a new survey whenever you
change the area the survey covers, the date is different or
the survey team is different.

2. Viewer (5-22-07) Fixed a problem in the Viewer where you
couldn't go from the Viewer to the Editor for certain files
and paths.

3. Editor (5-22-07). Added feature in the Editor that
displays detailed information about the file that is
currently open, including dates and command line
information.

4. Project Manager (5-31-07). Added a feature to produce
"Developed" or "Unfolded" profiles. The feature produces
plot files where all the passage are set to the same
azimuth. This effectively flattens the profile view of the
cave. This allows you to see the full profile of the cave
even when the passages twist around so them come directly
toward or away from the screen.

5. Project Manager (6-3-07). Fixed a very subtle bug that
occurred if you had at least two fixed stations, you were
using UTM convergence rotation and you were closing the cave
with a fairly large error. Under these circumstances, the
Convergence Rotation would get applied twice causing the
loops not to be close properly.

6. Viewer (6-8=07). Made the Find Survey Dialog more usable
by making the dialog resizable, so grids of data could be
expanded for easier viewing.

7. CaveX (8-20-07). Because Windows Vista does not support
DirectX Retained Mode, there is a new version of CaveX
called CaveXO which uses OpenGL. OpenGL works under all
versions of Windows.

8. All Programs (8-20-07). All the Compass Help files have
been converted to CHM help file format. This was necessary
to in order for Compass to work properly unders Windows
Vista.

9. Project Manager (8-27-07). There is now a new option that
displays statistcal information about all the "Sections" in
a Project.

10. All Programs (8-30-07). Made a number of changes to the way
all programs install so they can be installed and used under a lower
privilege account.

11. Project Manager (8-20-07). A number improvements were
made to the statistics display.

12. CaveX (11-3-07). The new version of CaveX (CaveXO) can now read and write
X-Files.

13. Viewer (12-9-07). Fixed a problem where if you tried to
print a plot with thick lines using the Complex Plotting
with Station Labeling turned on, only one survey would print
with the thick lines.

14. Viewer. (12-9-07). Added an option to the Complex Plotting Feature
that allows you to select a full palette of colors for the Survey and
Section coloring options.

15. Editor. (12-30-07). There are two new block modify features. The first one
is used to come up with relevant surveys names for files where the survey
names have been omitted. It does this by analyzing the survey shots.
The second feature allows you to rearrange the LRUD data when it was
incorrectly entered.


===========================================================================
9-17-06
===========================================================================

1. Project Manager (11-2-05). Fixed a problem where
suspended shots were not included in the per-survey
statistics.

2. Viewer. (11-27-05) The Viewer now saves various station
handling options such as the Station Mark Shape, the Station
Mark Size, etc. This allows you to configure default
settings for these options.

3. Viewer/CaveX. (12-11-05) Fixed a problem with the 3D
Exporter that limited the Station Names (and other strings)
to eight characters when Station Names can be up to 12
characters.

4. Project Manager. (1-4-06). Added an attached error log
that automatically displays during compliation or loop
closing. This make it easier to get to the error log and
make you more aware of error conditions.

5. Cave Editor. (1-21-06) The Editor now has two new
features that allow you to make changes to Station Names
across a large number of shots. The options allows you to
add Prefixes and Postfixes to Station Names. The options
also allow you to remove Prefixes and Postfixes to Station
Names. The option can be applied to assortments of whole
surveys and a range of shots within surveys.

6. Viewer. (2-28-06) The Viewer now has a new option that
will fit the cave to the current screen size. This allows
you to view the whole cave when even when the Viewer window
is small.

7. Editor. (2-28-06) When deleting a survey, the highlight
now moves the previous entry rather than to the beginning of
the list. This makes it easy delete several surveys because
you don't have re-find your place in the list.

8. Editor. (2-28-06) Fixed several minor problems in the
Advanced Survey search feature.

9. 3D Converter (2-29-06). Fixed a problem in where the
program would omit stations with the same name only one was
upper case the other lower case.

10. 3D Converter. (3-27-06). Moved the "Unit" option off of
the Misc Page and put it in a more obvious place where it is
visible from the export options.

11. 3D Converter. (3-28-06). Fixed a problem where the
Elevations in some Shapefile DBF files were not converted to
meters when the Meters option was selected.

12. CaveBase. (4-27-06) Added a new feature to CaveBase that
allows you to add, delete or move fields in an existing
database without losing data.

13. Viewer. (6-25-06). Fixed a problem that occurred when
you were trying to enter a search string in a "Search/Find"
dialog box. If any of the characters in the search string
were one of the Menu Shortcut keys, the character would not
be entered, and the Action associated with the short cut
would be carried out. 

14. Editor. (7-15-06). Fixed a problem where clicking on the
results of an advanced search would take you to the wrong
survey if the surveys were not in the original order, such
as sorted by date.

15. Project Manager. (8-8-06). Fixed an unintialized
variable problem that could cause small inaccuracies the
statistics reporting.

16. Project Manager. (8-15-06). Improved the file-opening
dialogs so they can be expanded to view more files and
folders.

17. Editor. (8-15-06). Increased the editors shot capacity
from 1500 to 5000 shots. Also added a feature to warn the
user that the too many items have been pasted into the
editor and the buffer overflowed.

18. Project Manager. (8-24-06). The "Custom Export" option
now allows you to export the closing shots a separate part
of the list.

19. Viewer. (9-16-06). The Viewer now has the ability to display
shot information such as azimuth, length or inclination next to
each shot.

20. Project Manager. (9-16-06). The Project Manager now
displays distance from the entrance for each station as a
part of the statistics display. This is not the straight-line
distance from the entrance, but the actual walking distance
to reach the station

21. Viewer. (9-16-06). The Viewer will now display the
distance to the entrance in the "Find Survey/Station" tool.
This is not the straight-line distance from the entrance,
but the actual walking distance to reach the station

22. Viewer. (9-16-06). The Viewer will now color surveys by
their distance from the entrance. This is not the
straight-line distance from the entrance, but the actual
walking distance to reach the station.

23. Viewer. (9-17-06). The "Complex Plotting" of the Viewer
now allows you to selectively color passages according to their
distances from the entrance. This allows you to create color
maps showing time or difficulty in reaching certain zones of the
cave.


===========================================================================
11-1-05
===========================================================================

1. Viewer. The Measurement Tool now displays commas in
thousands place. This makes it easier to read the very large
numbers that are displayed when the cave is referenced to
geographic coordinates.

2. 3D Exporter. Fixed a bug in the Shapefile exporter where
if the program was set to meters, the bounding box was still
exported in feet.

3. Viewer. The Viewer can now read GIF, PNG, TIFF and JPG
files for bitmap backgrounds.

4. Viewer. Normally, the Viewer displays all passages walls,
even though they may face away from the user and may be
hidden by the front wall. As a result, the Viewer now has a
"Hide Back Walls" option. When the is enabled, passage walls
facing away from the user are not displayed. This makes the
display less cluttered and makes it easier to pick out
individual passages. It also speeds up the display

5. 3D Exporter (12/29/04). Fixed a problem where the Exporter
could not be run twice without restarting the main program.

6. All Compass Programs (12/29/04). All programs now show the
name of the file they work on in the Icon on the Windows Task
bar. This makes it easier work with multiple copies of
Compass running working on different caves.

7. CaveBase (12/29/04). Fixed a problem where CaveBase would
complain if you used the "Reopen" menu to view and aliased
database.

8. 3D Exporter. (1-8-05). Fixed a problem where if you
exported a DXF file, the "Save Dialog Box" would not be
correctly set for Shapefiles.

9. SDTSConverter. (1-16-05). Added a feature that suggests a
filename based on the DEM Title. This makes it easier to
convert a group of files without having to look at the
content of the file to figure out which quadrangle it is.

10. Declination. (1-20-05). The magnetic models for
calculating declination have been updated to with latest IAGA
data. This means that Compass can now generate magnetic
declinations until year 2010.

11. 3D Exporter. (1-26-05). Fixed another problem where
Shapefile data was output as feet even though meters was
selected.

12. Viewer. (2-1-05). Fixed a bug that had crept in that
would not allow you to save Rose/Depth graphs to files.

13. Project Manager. (2-3-05) The Blunder Detection dialog
box can now be expanded so that more entries can be viewed in
the lists.

14. Editor. (2-6-05) Added a feature that allows the Editor
to search for any Station Name, word in a Comment or any
survey Team Members.

15. 3D Exporter. (2-7-05). The Exporter can now mark station
locations witn a circle. The circle can transparent or
opaque.

16. Viewer. (2-7-05). The Viewer can now mark stations with
circles as well as triangles.

17. Viewer. (2-10-05). Fixed a size problem with passage wall
marks.

18. Project Manager. (2-25-05). The survey statistics section
now shows Total Length, Total Shots, Included Length,
Included Shots, Excluded Length and Excluded Shots.

19. Project Manager. (3-5-05) The lists in the Statistics and
Blunder Detection windows now support wheel mice and hot
scrolling. (Note: you may need to click on one of the cells
in the list before it will respond to the Wheel Mouse.) Also,
right click context menu has been added to the Status Dislay.

20. CaveX. (3-12-05) CaveX now has the ability to generated
3D Rose-Depth diagrams. These full 3D models that can panned,
rotated and zoomed, which allows them to be viewed from any
angle. 3D Rose Diagrams are much more useful than ordinary
Rose Diagrams because they allow you to see passage trends
that only exist at certain depths in the cave.

21. Viewer. (3-16-05). The Viewer now has the option of
scaling metafiles. This gives more control of the scaling and
image size when metafiles are imported into drawing programs.

22. Editor. (3-20-05). Fixed a problem that occurred where if
you entered new data and then inserted a new shot without
leaving the cell, the new data would be lost.

23. Viewer. (3-20-05). Fixed a problem where the saving a
scaled bitmap would cause the cave to be scaled too large.

24. Viewer. (3-20-05). The interface for the Viewer has been
reworked so there are now scrollbars on the screen when the
Viewer window has not been maximized. This allows you to
scroll to any part of the cave plot without expanding the
window.

25. Viewer. (3-21-05). There is now a miniture 3D Compass on
the tool bar that can be used to rotate the cave in 3D space.
This makes it easier to do rotation without opening the
larger 3D Compass.

26. Project Manager. (3-21-05). Made several improvements to
the Blunder detection routines. These include displaying the
original Azimuth, Length and Inclination with each blundered
shot candidate. This makes it easier to select the likely
blunder. For example, let's say the program suggests that a
10-degree inclination adjustment on a shot will close the
loop. This means that simply changing the sign on a 5-degree
inclination would fix the error. If the shot has a 5-degree
inclination, it is a very likely candidate to be blundered.

27. 3D Exporter. (5-3-05). The 3D Exporter will now exports a
label that displays the cave depth at each station in the DXF
files.

28. Project Manager. (5-25-05). The Project Manager now has a
popup menu that will appear when you right click on the
Project Tree. The popup menu gives you easy access to most
common commands.

29. Project Manager/Editor. (5-25-05). The Geocalculator has
been improved so it is easier to enter Longitude and
Latitude. In the past, the auto-correct feature of the
program would change several numbers at once if you entered
an invalide Longitude or Latitude.

30. Editor. (6-25-05) Fixed a problem with the "Advanced
Search Feature" where it would not work properly when
European number formats were used. For example, in many
European countries, a comma "," is used as a decimal point,
whereas a period "." is used in the US.

31. Project Manager/Editor. (6-25-05) Fixed a problem where
Editor would report that the Geographic Position was not set
if the computer was set to European number format. (See
number 30 above.)

32. GTFViewer. (7-11-05) The GTFViewer now has the ability to
adjust brightness, contrast and gamma to improve the quality
of an image.

33. Viewer. (8-6-05) The Viewer now has a right-click context
menu that allows you carry out commands more quickly.
Currently the menu includes the option to identify the survey
under the cursor. There is also the option of editing the
survey under the cursor.

34. Viewer. (8-9-05) The Viewer's Complex Plotting Feature
has more options for Surveys and Sections. Surveys can now be
selectively displayed using Color-By-Depth. Sections can be
selectively Excluded, Colored, Show Stations or Colored By
Depth. This makes the Section and Survey options symetrical.

35. Viewer. (8-13-05) The Viewer's Complex Plotting Feature
now allows you to selectively plot Sections or Survey using
the 2D and 3D passage modeling features of Compass. This is
useful for plotting cave passages along with surface terrain.

36. Viewer. (8-14-05) Several features were added to Viewer's
Complex Plotting Feature. First, Passage Wall Modeling can be
independently applied to any survey or cave section. Second,
you now have independent control over labeling stations so
that station labels can be added to any of the other options.

37. Viewer. (8-20-05) Several new features were added to the
Viewer's Complex Plotting Feature. First, the tops and
bottoms of the Depth colors can be set based on the top and
bottom of the selected surveys and sections. Second, the
ability to adjust each band's width had been improved so that
the bands can be narrower. There are also features that make
it easier to select individual bands.

38. Viewer. (8-20-05) The Viewer now has the ability to color
the cave according to the distance from the user's view
point. By using a gradient of 23 colors, the program creates
illusion of 3D passages with the need for colored glasses.
The option includes a white-black color scheme for black
screens, a black-white scheme for white screens and a
red-blue scheme for enhanced 3D. You can also create your own
custom color schemes. The display is also "Depth-Sorted" so
the near passage appear on top of far away passages, no
matter what the original survey order was.

39. Project Manager. (8-21-05) The Project Manager now saves
the UTM Datum along with the Geographic Location. Also, a
default Datam is saved with the "User Defaults."

40. All Programs. (8-24-05). The Geocalculator now has
several improvements in the way Datum conversions are
handled. The main change is that it uses the Molondensky
transform for more accuracy when converting between datums.

41. Project Manager. (9-6-05). The Project Manager now allows
you to save a default setting for Meter vs. Feet so that
all parts of the program default to the specified units.

42. Project Manager. (9-17-05). Fixed a minor problem where
the first station in the plot file is not necessarily the
origin of the cave.

43. Project Manager. (10-13-05). Project Manager now allows
the user to select a default directory where most cave files
are kept. The program then automatically uses the default as
the starting point you go to open a file.

44. GTFViewer. (10-24-05). The GTFViewer will now save images
as GeoTiff images. This will allow you to register any image
with geographic coordinates and scales.

45. Viewer. (10-27-05). The Viewer now supports the option of
locking bitmap images to the cave. This is useful for tying
topographic maps, aerial photographs and other maps or
drawings to the cave. Once the image has been registered, the
image will expand, contract, shift and rotate synchronisly
with cave. There is also the option of editing, triming, and
resizing the image. You can also adjust the contrast,
brightness and gamma of the image. This is useful for
correcting overly dark or light images and improving it
readability.

46. Project Manager. (10-27-05). Fixed a problem with the
Project Manager where it would not save the state of the
Convergence option if it had been turned on and then turned
off. In other words, if you enable Convergence, saved the
file and then turned it off, you could not save the fact that
it had been turned off.

45. Project Manager. (10-27-05). Added a feature to the Statistics
Section that allows custom export of information to databases and
spreadsheet. The feature allows you to create Coma or Tab-Delimited
text files that can be imported into most data bases and spreadsheets.
You have complete control over which data items are exported.

46. Viewer. (10-29-05). Improved the Drag Mode zooming feature to make
it smoother and to work over a larger range.


===========================================================================
12-1-04
===========================================================================

1. Viewer. The DXF Exporter now has the option of putting
passage marks at either the From or the To stations.

2. Project Manager. Fixed a problem where fixed stations did
not purge the station list which caused station name collisions with
some files. The program now properly handles both links and
fixed stations.

3. Project Manager. Fixed several problems with file handling
in the Project Manager.

4. CaveX. CaveX now has a "transparency" option, which allows
you to see through the passage walls so you can see the
survey shot line, survey stations and other nearby passages.

5. CaveX. There are several improvements to CaveX's scaling
and zooming, which makes it easier to fly through the
passages.

6. Project Manager. Reduced the Project Managers use of CPU
time while the Editor is running. This reduces the program's
demands upon the system and makes other applications more
responsive.

7. Project Manager. Fixed some minor problems with the
default date and location for Geographic Calculator.

8. Viewer. Added complete passage modeling options including
Octagnonal passage shape, merged prism ends and corner
rounding.

9. Viewer. Fixed a bug in the Find Stations tool where the
cursor would not move back to the nearest station if it was
moved a short distance from the station.

10. Viewer. Fixed a problem where the Viewer would not center
on a station with certain video drivers.

11. Viewer. Several improvements were made to the way the
Viewer responds to mouse movements and button clicks. The
Viewer now longer get stuck in drag mode with the view
changing everytime the mouse is moved even when all the
button are up. The automatic update works better in various
dragging modes.

12. Viewer. The Viewer now supports a wheel mouse for
zooming.

13. Viewer. The Viewer can read TIFF, JPEG, and Metafiles for
background images. The Viewer also has a dialog box that
allows you to preview the images before loading.

14. Project Manager/Editor. Fix a problem that made it
difficult to enter certain UTM coordinates. The problem
occurred because the program tried to automatically correct
for invalid UTM values. Now it just displays an error
message.

15. Project Manager. There are now two buttons on the Project
Manager. One processes and displays the whole project and the
other only processes and displays the highlighted item. This
makes it less confusing and clearer what item is being
processed and displayed.

16. Editor. To simplify entering shot flag information, the
Editor copies the flags from the previous shot, when you
create a new shot. There is now an option to disable/enable
the feature.

17. ExTierra. ExTierra is a new Terrain modeling program that
can create realist 3D images of the earth's surface using DEM
files. The images support coloring, shadowing and texturing
and can produce real-time animation speeds of hundreds of
frames per second with a good graphics card. The terrain can
be overlain with topographic maps and aerial photographs
which give extremely realistic views of the surface that look
like you are literally flying over the land.

18. All Programs. There is now an integrated 3D compositing
engine in all Compass programs. This enables all Compass
viewers and to produce sophisticated 3D models of cave
passages.

19. Viewer, CaveX. These two programs now have an integrated
export engine which handled exporting DXF files, Shapefiles
and VRML files. VRML files are the big new addition. VRML
images can be used post 3D Cave Image on the internet. Since
VRML Viewers are available for all types of computers and
operating systems, they can be used view cave images on
virtually any computer.

===========================================================================
6-7-04
===========================================================================

1. Project Manager. The Project Manager now calculates the
surface area of all the passages in the cave. This can be
useful calculating the area available as habitat for cave
dwelling animals, calculation heat transfer to between rock
and air, etc.

2. Viewer. Fixed problem where the Viewer did not display the
print dialog before printing and also did not display the
"Print To File" option.

3. DEMReader. Fixed a problem where the DEM Reader would not
properly display the corner locations on some for DEM Files.

4. Editor. Fixed a problem that caused a floating point error
if you tried to repair a shots that had been entered as
inclination but was really depth gauge.

5. Editor. Added an option that allows you to repair depth
gauge units where the values were entered as meters or feet
incorrectly.

6. Project Manager. The Blunder tools now gives you the
choice of displaying data in either meters or feet.

7. SDTSCon. There is a new program that converts SDTS DEM
file to the old DEM format. It is faster and more error
tolerant than other programs.

8. Project Manager. Fixed a problem where the statistic
display columns did not alway align vertically.

9. Project Manager. Fixed a problem that occurred if you
compiled the same data twice with out restarting the program.
If you did this on some caves, the statistics would be
slightly different between compiles.

10. Editor. The automatic station incrementing function now
leaves all leading zeros in tack.

11. Geo Tiff Viewer. The Viewer now has the ability to
manually scale imnages. This allows you to do measurement on
images that don't have the usual GeoTiff scaling and
coordinates.

12. CaveX. CaveX can now saves screen images as bitmap files.

13. Viewer. The Viewer now offers the option of tilting the
whole cave in addition to tilting the color and the Depth
Exclusions. This allows you to remove any tilt to the cave
caused by geological uplift.

14. Project Manager. Fixed a problem with the Loop Closer
that would cause distortions when closing long strings
between fixed stations.

15. New Discounts. Groups discounts for Compass products has
been increased by 5%.

16. GTFViewer. The viewer now shows compass angle along with
the other measurements.

17. CaveX. The program now show more accurate Yaw, Pitch and
Roll values.

18. Project Manager. The Project Manager now includes Passage
Floor Area as part of its statistics.

19. All Programs. The resource useage of all Compass programs
has been reduced. This is especially useful for people who
are using Windows 95, 98 or ME because these operating
systems don't allocate resources very efficiently. This makes
Compass more stable under these operating systems. Also means
that you can open up to four copies of the Viewer without
depleating resources under Win98. (Note: this was never an
issue under WinNT, 2000 or XP.)

20. Viewer. The Complex plotting feature now allows you to
display a list of all that surveys that have been included in
the complex plot. This is useful for picking out the surveys
that pertain to certain parts of the cave or have certain
characteristics.

21. Viewer. The Complex Plotting Feature now allows you to
select specific parts of a cave to analize the tilt of the
passages. This allows you to compensate for the regional dip
of the cave based on specific parts of the cave.

22. Project Manager/Editor. The Geographic Calculator now
calculates magnetic declination based on the IGRF and DGRF
models, covering a range of date from 1900 to 2005. This
allows you to enter accurate declination for any location and
any modern date. The Project Manager also has a feature that
overrides the entered declinations and calculates them for
each survey during the compile and closing process.

23. CaveX. CaveX has improved movie capture controls that
allow you to set up the file in advance and then trigger the
start and end of capture with a single button click. This
makes it much easier to setup and then capture movie
animations.

24. CaveX. The help file for CaveX have been extensively
rewritten.

25. CaveBase. CaveBase has been convert to a 32-bit program.
It has an improved windows layout, making it easier to view
and edit the data. There is improved support for Access
databases. The latest version of the Borland Database Engine
is now distributed with Compass.

26. DEM Reader. There a number of improvements to the DEM
Reading including a number of bug fixes, improved screen
layout, and rewritten help files.

29. Editor. The number of shot that can be edited in a single
survey has been increased from 500 to 1500.

30. AURIGA SUPPORT FOR COMPASS. Auriga is a program that
allows you to enter and plot cave data directly into a Palm
computer. Since Palms computers are small, light and
inexpensive, they can be carried underground and are the
perfect surveying tools. Auriga now has features that allow
you export the cave data to Compass. For more information,
follow this link:

http://www.speleo.qc.ca/auriga

31. CaveX. CaveX now has improved passage modeling. Corners
have been made smoother and more precise. There are also
features that handle vertical passage properly.

32. Shapefile Export. Shapefile Export. Compass now can to do
direct exports of Shapefiles, which allow cave data to be
read into ArcView and other ESRI programs. The export
includes nine different parameters so that different aspect
of the cave passages can be viewed separately in the GIS
programs. The options include 2D and 3D passage modeling.
Having Shapefile export in Compass allows you to use free
ERSI software such ArcExplorer.

===========================================================================
4-13-2003
===========================================================================

1. ALL PROGRAMS. Windows allows two basic font scalings. The
most common is 96 pixels per inch. The other is 120 pixels
per inch. Some parts of COMPASS were improperly scaled when
the Windows was in the 120 pixel mode. As a result, all
COMPASS program have been improved so they work better with
the large font modes.

2. VIEWER. The Viewer can export the Rose Diagrams and the
Depth histograms as Windows Metafiles. This produces much
higher quality images in word processor and publishing
programs.

3. VIEWER. The Viewer now has an animation option that allows
you to create movies much easier than before. The animation
option allows you to set a series of points that define the
animations sequence. The program then produces a series of
intermediate points that creates a smooth, realistic
animations sequence.

4. GENERAL. Jim Olsen has created a new program that convert
COMPASS files to Adobe Acrobat files. This is very useful for
creating finished maps from COMPASS data. The web address is:
http://www.caversdigest.com/software.htm

5. ALL PROGRAMS. Solved a problem where files with path names
longer than 80 characters could cause a problem. Path names
can now 255 characters long.

6. VIEWER. Some versions of Windows cannot handle bitmaps
larger than about 16 megabytes. In the past, the Viewer
wouldn't allows you to try to save bitmaps larger than 16
megabytes. The Viewer will now warn you, but still allow you
to try.

7. VIEWER. The Viewer now has a features that helps draw
passage models for vertical or near-vertical passages. When
the feature is turned on, the program substitutes west, east,
north and south for Left, Right, Up and Down respectively.
This gives more realistic models for steep passages. You also
have the choice of selecting a threshold angle at which the
vertical modeling takes place.

8. VIEWER. The "Views" option in the Viewer now saves the
passage wall modeling mode. Previously generated "Views" will
now be obsolete.

9. PROJECT MANAGER. Fixed a problem with the some of the
icons would no display properly.

10. VIEWER. Fixed a problem where the Viewer did not save
Enhanced Metafiles correctly or set the right extension.

11. DEM Reader. Fixed a problem that would not allow the DEM
Reader to read certain large, 10-meter resolution files.

12. Project Manager. Fixed a problem were the Loop Closer
would not close traverse between fixed stations.

13. Project Manager. Added a tool for importing CMAP files.

14. Project Manager. The program now has the ability to
display a chart of station sequences. This makes it easy to
find what station names have been used and what names are
currently free. Thanks to Peter Bosted for the idea and the
basic algorithm for accomplishing it.

15. Project Manager. The SEF export tool now has the option
of omitting the directory structure from the SEF file. Some
programs don't handle SEF directory commands properly.

16. Project Manager. The statistics display can now show a
list of excluded shots and excluded shots are now displayed
in the station sequence option.

17. Project Manager. Fixed a problem where a multi-cave
system with fixed entrance locations would not close
properly. The closer would link duplicate stations together.

18. CaveBase. There is now an example database for Fulford
Cave included with with CaveBase.

19. CaveBase. The program now allows the window to be
expanded to full screen size. This allows you to see more
items in the database table.

20. CaveX/Web Page. Microsoft has discovered a security
problem with the XWeb control and Internet Explorer. The web
page now has information about resolving this problem.

===========================================================================
5-15-2002
===========================================================================

1. Viewer. Fixed a problem where the station labels would
draw outside the "Paper" in the Print Preview window.

2. Editor. Fixed a problem where the Editor would display a
blank cave name when a new survey was created.

3. Viewer. The Exclude Extents option of the Complex Plotting
feature now allows you to zoom in on the Windows. This makes
it easy to visually set more precise clipping boundries.

4. Viewer. All the pan, zoom and rotate buttons in the Print
Preview dialog will "auto-repeat" if hold you them down for a
half second. This makes it much easier to position the cave
on paper.

5. CaveBase. Fixed a problem with CaveBase where it could not
connect to the new 32-bit version of the Viewer.

6. Viewer. Viewer now has the ability to display multi-page
print preview and print all the pages in one operation. This
is useful when you are printing caves at a scale that will
take up more than one page. The preview will display up to
100 pages simultaneously, with each page placed in a grid so
you see how the cave layouts on pages. These are perfectly
scaled pages that show an exact model of the what will appear
on the page, including rotation, colors, labels and passage
wall modeling. You can micro-adjust the position on the pages

7. Credit Card Registration and Ordering. You can now do
COMPASS registeration online using Visa or Master Card. This
is especially useful for overseas users because it avoids the
problems of currency conversion and sending money through the
mails.

8. Project Manager. Fixed a problem where passage dimensions
would be wrong if you closed shots where the From and To
stations were reversed.

9. Viewer. Fixed a problem where the Quad Labels would
disappear or do strange things if you zoomed in too far. Also
fixed a bug where the Reference Setting and Corner Setting
would not work properly if the Decrement options were on.

10. Editor. Fixed a problem with the new editor where it
would not limit the length of stations names to 12
characters.

11. Editor. Fixed a problem that caused problems saving newly
modified data. If the "Read Only" attribute were set on a
"*.DAT" file, or the backup file (*.BAK), the editor could
not save the changes in the editor. This could happen if the
data came from a CD-ROM other data source that set the read
only attributes of files.

12. Editor. Fixed a problem where the Editor would not notice
changes made just by the Delete key.

13. DEM Reader. The DEM Reader will now copy data from Edit
Grid to the Windows Clipboard. This can be useful putting
terrain data into spreadsheets and other programs.

14. Editor. You can now navigate the edit using Tab character
to move to the next cell and Shift-Tab to move to the last
cell.

15. PayPals. Now supports zero fees for international orders.

16. Viewer. The Viewer now gives you the option of removing
the dotted line crossbars that appear in the passage modeling
when mark stations.

17. Project Manager. The compiler now converts negative shot
lengths to positive for the purpose of totaling cave lengths.
(Apparently, there is old data that contains negative shot
lengths.)

18. Editor. Fixed several other problems that caused problems
saving data under certain operating system conditions.

19. General. The Section Name is based on the name of each
data file. As a result, the size of the Section Name has been
increased to 20 characters to make it more compatable with
long filenames.

20. DEMReader. Fixed several bugs in the option for copying
and pasting to the Edit grid.

21. DEMReader. The DEMReader will now save users default such
meters/feet and all the plot options.

22. Viewer. The pen thickness option in the Printer Options
Window, now applies to station marks. This makes the marks
easier to see on a high resolution printers.

24. Viewer. The station marks are now scaled in Points
instead of Pixels to give a more consistant display.

25. Viewer. The Printing routines have been rewritten to
improve their reliability and performance. For example, the
routines have been rewritten so they more faithfully
reproduce bitmap colors.

26. Viewer. Some large format printer and plotters have
defective drivers that cause problems if you try to print on
paper larger than 32 inches in any dimension. The Viewer now
has an option that compensates for this problem by lowering
print resolution.

27. Project Manager. There are several improvements to the
Project Manager display. The "Project Tree" displays a
specialized icon for each type of data in the project. Also,
there is now a special icon that allows you to tell at a
glance that a data file has fixed stations or links
associated with it. The "Project Tree" is also much faster
updating and searching, which is useful for large cave
systems.

28. Project Manager. The drag-and-drop capability in the
Project Tree has been improved so that it works more
naturally and intuitively.

===========================================================================
11-16-2001
===========================================================================

1. General. All COMPASS programs have been converted to
32-bits. This makes all COMPASS programs several times
faster. It also means that there is complete support for long
filenames.

2. General. COMPASS is now completely integrate into Windows
shell including the ability to double-click on files to
process cave files. It also includes the ability to create
new survey files and project files from the Windows context
menus.

3. General. All COMPASS program have new and more
professional installation programs which handles integration
with the operating system.

4. General. Over the years, the COMPASS help files grown
haphardly as new feature were added. As a result, they were
disorganized and there were many typos and spelling errors.
All the main COMPASS help files have been complete rewritten
and reorganized, with many more hyperlinks and more
information. There are now more than 480 pages of help in the
main COMPASS help documents.

5. Project Manager. The Loop Closer and Compiler have been
integrated into the Project Manager. This makes COMPASS
easier to use and gives better access to statistics and
blunder location tools

6. Project Manager. Project Manager is three times faster,
compiling and closing all 108 miles of Lech in 26sec on
Pentium 450.

7. Project Manager can now be expanded to full screen for
better viewing of the surveys and settings.

8. Project Manager. Statistics and Blunder Finding options
have been vastly improved. Both Compile and Close statistics
have been integrated into Project Manager. Paging has been
eliminated and all statistics are displayed on a single
screen. The statistic window can be expanded to full screen,
for easier viewing. It is also much easier to generate
statistics and validate that the loops are being closed
properly.

9. Project Manager. The Compiler now displays 2D error
information as well as the usual 3D information. The 2D
information only includes north and east aspects of a loop
error, excluding the vertical. This is useful for focusing
separately on compass/length errors versus inclination
errors. It is also useful for caves where the inclination
measurements are significantly inferior to the other
measurements.

10. Project Manager. The Compiler now displays additional
statistical information for survey loops. This includes the
number of shots per loop and various error values per shot.

11. Project Manager. Fixed a some inaccuracies in the
statistics including problems with area, volume and meters
conversions.

12. Project Manager. The loop display in the blunder detector
can now be copied to the clipboard for display in another
document.

13. Project Manager. The "Tie-In" blunder detecting tool now
displays the "from" station to more clearly deliniate which
shot is adjusted.

14. Project Manager. The Blunder detection routines now have
the option of finding the next worst blunder. This allows you
find the worst blunders in sequence and focus on fixing the
worst problems first.

15. Project Manager. The Blunder detection routines now save
or print the loop stations along with the rest of the blunder
analysis information.

16. Project Manager. Increased the number of fixed stations
that can exist for a single data file to 500.

17. Project Manager. Made several improvements to the SEF
import and export tools including exporting COMPASS flags.

18. Project Manager. The Compiler now allows you to break
loops at the closing shot. This allows you to visually see
the effect of loop errors. To make the closing station easier
to see, the is enclosed in square brackets.

19. Project Manager. Fixed a problem in the Project Manager
where the Copy Project option would try to copy survey names
if the Project Tree was expanded to show surveys.

20. Project Manager. Improved the drag and drop capabilities
of the Manipulate Survey option to make it match the standard
Windows behaviour.

21. Project Manager. Fixed a bug where the Fixed Station
option would not handle negative UTM zones in some cases.

22. Project Manager. The Project Manager has ability to
directly rename project files and survey files directly.

23. Project Manager. Inserting exiting file does not leave
"?" if you exit without selecting.

24. Viewer. The Viewer is now 20 times faster than the
previous 16-bit version. This is due to the use of 32-bit
code and new special optimizations. Currently I am get
refresh rates of 12 fps on 106 miles of Lechuguilla Cave and
the refresh rate is even faster as you zoom in. On top of
this, CaveX is even faster.

25. Viewer. The Viewer now supports exporting Windows
Metafiles. Metafiles have advantages over bitmaps because
they can be resized without losing pixels or creating jagged
lines. The Viewer can export both Regular and Enhanced
metafiles. This makes it compatable with many different
drawing and CAD programs that can import metafiles. Enhanced
Metafiles produce very high quality printouts which are much
better suited for publication.

26. Viewer. The Viewer will now save cave movies as Windows
AVI. This allows them to be displayed on any movie viewer and
they can also be converted to other formats like MP3 for
display on the web.

27. Viewer. Added 64-bit numerical precision to station
coordinates in order to handle large offsets generated by UTM
coordinates.

28. Viewer. DXF files can now be exported in either feet or
meters.

29. CaveX. CaveX now offers the option of creating a default
passage size for those passages where the LRUDs are missing.
The feature can be turned on or off and the default size is
selectable.

30. CaveX. Menu system has been reorganized and simplified
for easier use.

31. CaveX. CaveX now has the option of saving AVI movie files
of your the 3D cave models. When you turn on the AVI mode,
all movements and changes are saved to the movie. This means
that you can fly through and around the cave and everything
you see will be saved in the movie. You have complete control
over the frame rate and you can set movie capture to stop
after a certain number of frames or a certain time.

32. DEMReader. More and more DEM files are being distributed
with file format defects. This usually renders the files
unusable. However the COMPASS DEM reader will handle five
different DEM file defects. This will allow you to use many
DEM free and inexpensive files. The DEMReader will handle the
following flaws. 1) Missing map-corner information. 2)
Descrepancies between map corner locations and profile
locations. 3) Modulo 1024 byte blocks terminated with CR/LFs.
5) Modulo 1024 byte blocks terminated early with LFs.

33. DEM Files. The USGS has turned all its data distributions
over to a private company. The data is still available free
and they have more complete coverage. However, the data is
more difficult to find and download. For complete
information, refer to the COMPASS web page.
(https://www.fountainware.com/compass).

34. DEMRead. You can now paste grid points into the DEM
reader from the clipboard. This allows you to import
elevation data from spreadsheets and databases.

35. DEMRead. You can now export the grid data as standard
survey DAT file. This gives you another mechanism for
creating a surface grid.

36. Editor. Fixed a bug where the Editor would not allow you
to enter Inclinations of 100 Grads. Also fixed a bug where
the Editor would not display the units label for Grads
correctly.

38. Editor. Fixed a bug where the Editor would not use the
date if it was entered from the "Survey Calendar."

39. Editor. Improve date handling. Converts two digits dates
to 1900 or 2000 based dates depending on the current year.

40. Editor will now handle 500 shots per survey.

41. Viewer. The Viewer now has a special features that
automatically captures movie frames each time the image
changes. This allows you to capture movies on-the-fly as you
pan and zoom through the cave. This makes it easy to create
realistic movies.

42. Editor. There are now repair options for measurements
that were entered as degrees but were actually depth gauge
and vice versa.

43. Many other small changes, bug fixes and cosmetic
improvements.

===========================================================================
3-15-2001
===========================================================================

1. Compiler. The Compiler now produces five new statical
measurements. These include, Surface Length, Surface Width,
Surface Area, Enclosed Volume, and Volume Density.

2. Compiler. Fixed a bug where the statistics for each survey
did not properly count suspended shots.

3. COMPASS CD. The COMPASS CD now has many more items
including more DEMs and the Microsoft DirectX-7 installation
package.

4. Editor. Fixed a problem where the Editor would not
correctly handle Quad style compass values where the second
direction was East.

5. Project Manager/Compiler. COMPASS now allows you to
calculate the UTM Convergence Angle for a location and rotate
the cave plot to match the UTM grid. A separate Convergence
Angle can be applied to the data in different parts of the
same Project to compensate for grid changes over distance.

6. Project Manager. The Geographic Calculator now allows you
to select West, East, North and South buttons to specify the
direction of Longitude and Latitude. In the past, you had to
specify plus or minus to do this. This makes Longitude and
Latitude settings more logical and easier.

7. Viewer. The Viewer now has a simple and more logical
method of setting colors and fonts. The colors and fonts
appear in a list with a more detailed description of what
they are for. There is also a sample of the color or font
nearby. This makes it more intuitive to set these options.

8. Viewer. The Viewer now puts a grid in the background of
the Shadow Box showing the dimensions of the box. You can
turn off the box leaving the grid alone for geographically
gridded and labeled maps. You have complete control of the
color, font, line and background of the grid.

9. Editor. Repaired a problem with the international comma
decimal point and and header values.

10. Compiler. Fixed a bug where the last survey would not be
displayed in the Sorted Survey List in Statistics.

11. Viewer. Fixed a bug where the Edit option in the Find
Dialog would not edit the correct file.

12. Compiler. Fixed a bug where the survey statistics would
be offset by one survey.

13. Viewer. There is now a 32 bit version of the Viewer which
is about 10 times faster than the 16 bit version. It will
also export bitmap images that have about three times more
resolution.

14. Viewer. The DXF export option now allows you scale the
exported image. This is useful with drawing programs that
have limited scaling capabilites.

15. Web Page. There are new links to DEM files, with more
complete coverage of the United States. The cost for
downloading 7.5 degree version DEM is only $5.00.

16. Viewer. The Viewer now allows you to set the "exact"
Pitch and Yawl rotation values for the cave. This is in
addition to the other "exact" scale values. This means that
you can set all parameter for recreating a specific view of
the cave.

17. CaveX. Fixed a problem where the program failed to run
properly with some installations of DirectX. The fix also
improve the lighting and fog effects.

18. CaveX. In the past CaveX would not display caves that
required more than 64,000 polygons to display the passage
walls. The program now allows meshes of unlimited size. This
will allow you to view extremely large caves such as
Lechuguilla.

19. CaveX. Improved CaveX so that it can be as much as 10
faster. Currently I'm able to render all 108 miles of
Lechuguilla Cave with full passage modeling, Gourad shading
and limestone textured passage walls at 20 frames per second.
This is a drawing rate of over 2,000,000 polygons per second.

20. CaveX. Improved the way that CaveX deals with installed
device drivers which allows you to select individual drivers
and test which one works best.

21. CaveX. Changed the initial scaling so you can get closer
to the cave without moving through the walls.

22. Viewer. Fixed a problem where when the "Water Direction"
feature of the Rose Diagram was enabled, clicking on the
diagram would not highlight or count the correct passages.

23. CaveX. Improved the color rendering in 8 bit graphics
modes.

24. Project Manager. Made it easier to enter Fixed Stations
and Links in the grid. You can now move from cell to cell
using the Enter key or the Tab key.

25. Editor. The survey header comments had been increased to
80 characters.

26. Editor. The Editor now has the option of setting flags
for multiple blocks of surveys simultaneously. You have the
option of Inserting, Replacing or Removing specific survey
flags.

27. Project Manager. In the past when the Project Manager was
running one of the COMPASS subprograms, it would monitor the
subprogram waiting for it to terminate. This wasted lots of
CPU cycles and would sometimes slow down other programs. The
program now uses very few CPU cycles to monitor the
subprogram and when the subprogram terminates, the Project
Manager is returned to center-screen.

28. Web Page. There is now a document posted on the web page
that describes the use of Canvas (a drawing) program for the
generation of digital cave maps.

29. CaveX. CaveX now supports color by depth options similiar
to those available in the COMPASS Viewer.

30. CaveX. CaveX now support the ability to simulate various
"materials" when displaying the passage walls. Material range
from highly reflective surfaces such as platistic or polished
metal, to dull surfaces like paper or wood.

31. Viewer. Fixed a problem with the DXF export. When Profile
Mode was used, the passage model was incorrect. Since the
Profile Mode is a 2D mode, only the Up and Down tick marks
are now exported.

32. Project Manager. Fixed problem where empty comments could
corrupt the exported file.

33. Editor. The Repair option now allows you to work on fore
and backsight values separately. This makes it possible to
repair large blocks of data where only one measurement is
bad.

34. CaveX. CaveX now has "Look At" button that causes the
viewer to smoothly pan and rotate until it is looking
directly at the center of the scene. It also rotates the
images so the top of the object is aligned with the top of
the screen. This is useful when you have panned, zoomed or
flown to position where you can't find the cave. Also, there
is a button on the Joystick which does the same thing.

35. Viewer. The Passage Model Dialog now has a "View" button
that allows you to see any changes before exiting.

36. CaveX. CaveX now has the option of copying the images to
the clipboard.

37. All Programs. COMPASS now gives you the choice of using
the International Foot or the US Survey Foot when displaying
or converting data. While the International Foot is used for
most measurements, the US Survey Foot is widely used for
maps, surveys and benchmarks.

38. Compiler. Fixed a problem where the statistic would
report the station count to smaller than was actually in the
cave.

===========================================================================
11-5-2000
===========================================================================

1. Viewer. The Viewer now allows you to mark the passage
walls from the orientation of the TO station.

2. CaveBase. CaveBase now has an option that allows you to
encode a date as a part of the query.

3. Compiler. The Compiler now list the overall average STD
for all the loops in the file. This gives you a single number
that rates the overall quality of all the loops in the cave.

4. All Programs. Fixed a problem that caused small errors
when converting feet to meters and vice versa. The problem
was caused by the fact that both the "International Foot" and
the "US Survey Foot" were used to do meter conversions. The
difference between these two conversions is very small
(.000000609601), however when you are converting very large
numbers like the UTM coordinates it is enough to accumulate
one digit of error in the result.

5. Viewer. Fixed a bug where the Set Scale, Magnifcation and
Rotation did not reset if you hit cancel when the meters
scaling options were enabled.

6. Viewer. Fixed a bug where a database query with only one
hit could cause problems if plotted with using a range of
symbol sizes.

7. Editor. Made small improvements to the way the Cutting,
Copying and Pasting works with rows of data.

8. CaveBase. Fixed a problem where CaveBase would not
correctly handle certain date values when transmitting them
to the Viewer.

9. All Programs. Increased the accuracy of the data stored by
all COMPASS programs to at least two digits past the decimal
point. In the past the data stored gave an accurracy of about
0.6 inch or 15mm. Now the accurracy is at least 0.06 inch or
1.5 mm.

10. Editor. Fixed a bug where the Backsight Validation
feature would not correctly validate a file unless at least
one survey had been read into the editor.

11. Editor. Added a option that puts the highlight on the
From Station whenever a new shot is created. This makes it
easy to override the Automatic Station Sequencing feature and
enter a different Station Name.

12. Viewer. Fixed a problem with the DXF exporter which
occurred if a survey name had an asterix "*" in it. The DXF
exporter converted the survey name to a layer name and
AutoCad would not accept the asterix "*".

13. Viewer. Added features to the DXF export feature that
allows more parts of the drawing to be exported as separate
layers. You can now associate the Passage Wall modeling and
the Station Labels with each Survey layer. This enables you
to turn off all the layers except for one or two surveys and
see all the labels and passage walls associated with those
surveys. You can also have a separate Passage Wall layer and
Station Label for each survey. This way you have complete
control of the color and can individually and separately turn
on and off stations, passage walls, and surveys.

14. Viewer. The Viewer now supports displaying database
values as numerical values as well as varying symbol sizes.
Numbers can be in fixed or scientific notation format, with
complete control over the number of digits.

15. Editor. The Editor now uses Tabs as the delimiter when it
Copys, Cuts, or Pastes to and from the Windows Clipboard.
This makes it more compatable with external Windows programs
like Excel.

16. Compiler. There are four new statistics presented in the
Compiler. The first is cave volume which is calculated based
on passage diameter and shot length. The second is Average
Passage Diameter. This is a measure of the size of the
passage in the cave. The third statistic is Average
Inclination. This gives a general estimate of how vertical
the cave is. The final statistic is Difficulty. It combines
the Average Passage Diameter and Inclination to give an
estimate of difficult it is to move through the cave.

17. Compiler. There are now options in the Blunder Detection
tools that allow you to search for stations, shots, and
closing shots in the loops. You can also find the worst loop
in the survey.

18. All Programs. The Survey Name fields has been increased
from 8 to 12 characters.

19. Compiler. The Compiler statistics now includes a list of
each survey in the cave and the length, number of shots and
average shot length for for each survey.

20. Cave Editor. The Editor allows you to search through a
survey file for the surveys where a specific station is
found. You can now double click on any of the surveys that
are found and the program will automatically highlight the
specific survey. This makes it easy to find and edit that
survey.

21. Viewer. The Viewer now saves all the Quad Map settings
with the "Views" information. This means that you can set up
any number of quad map patterns and save them for later
recall.

22. Compiler. The Compiler now allows you to search for any
string in the Statistics section. This makes it easier to
find loops, stations, shots, and surveys in the statistics.

23. Project Manager. In the past, you had to use a DOS
program to import or export COMPASS files. The Project
Manager now supports import and export to SEF file.

24. Project Manager. The Geographic Reference part of the
Project Manager now supports 24 goedetic datum formats. The
accuracy and precision of the numbers displayed have also
been improved.

===========================================================================
7-15-2000
===========================================================================

1. Editor. I fixed a problem where the Editor would do
multiple replaces on the same cell, if the cell was on the
edge of the display and the search string contained the same
characters as the replacement string.

2. Viewer. The Azimuth Rose, Inclination Rose and the Depth
Histogram now have the option of spacing the grid lines on
even multiples.

3. Editor. The Editor now checks for embedded spaces in
station names.

4. Viewer. In the complex plotting option, the symbols are
now centered on the lower left corner of the of the
character. This means that there is no longer an empty space
between the character and the target station.

5. Project Manager/ Editor. Fixed a bug where these two
programs would lock up if they tried read certain defective
COMPASS files. Specifically, if would lock up if the file was
missing a form feed.

6. Viewer. The Viewer now saves the refresh mode as a part of
the user defaults. This means that you can select a default
refresh mode and the program will come up in that mode.

7. Compiler. Fixed a problem that could cause the computer to
lock up if a survey file is missing a form feed.

8. CaveX. There are many changes to CaveX including improved
rending and editing features. The scene diagram is easier to
access. The program can now render the cave image in profile
mode. This makes the cave images more compatable with
standard 3D editing programs.

9. CaveX. Now makes it easier to save the images to DirectX
files. Internal textures can be saved with the X files.

10. Viewer. There have several improvements in the the Rose
and Depth graphs. You now have more precise control over the
band thickness. Also, vertical shots were included in Azimuth
Rose diagrams. This created an inordinate number of 90 degree
shots.

11. Viewer. There is now a new feature that allows the Viewer
to use a rainbow spectrum of 24 colors for coloring by depth,
date etc.

12. DEM Reader. The DEM reader has been completely rewritten
using 32 bit code. This allows you view and edit DEM files at
twice the resolutions as before. It also means that DEM
Reader is a 32 bit program and will not run under Win3.1. If
anyone is still using Win3.1, send me email and I can post
the old version.

13. Loop Closer. The Loop Closer can now close loops across
multiple files. This enables you to close large cave systems
while still maintaining the data is smaller more manageable
files.

14. Project Manager. The Project Manager now has feature that
allows you to copy projects to other directories, drives or
floppy disks. This make it easy make copies of the project
and share your data with other people.

15. All Programs. The various search features in the Editor,
Project Manager, and Viewer have been improved so they are
easier to use.

16. Viewer. The "Find Stations/Surveys" tool now operates so
that all parts are synchronized. This means that when you
locate a station, the corresponding survey and sections are
shown. This makes it easy to find which stations, surveys and
file belong together.

17. Viewer. The Viewer now has the ability to select a survey
or section of the cave and go directly to the Editor to view
or edit the corresponding raw survey data.

18. Project Manager. The Project Manager now makes it easier
to insert or delete links with a single button click.

19. Loop Closer. The Loop Closer has improved capabilities in
dealing with fixed stations. Several problems were fixed
where certain combinations of fixed stations caused incorrect
closure.

20. Editor. The Editor can now validate backsights for all
the surveys in a file as well as a single survey.

===========================================================================
2-6-2000
===========================================================================

1. CaveBase. Repaired a bug where CaveBase would not
correctly transfer data to the Viewer, if the Regional
Windows settings used commas as the decimal separator.

2. CaveBase. CaveBase now saves the last five files you used
in the file menu. This makes it easy to open recently used
files.

3. CaveBase. The Query Builder in CaveBase now has an option
box that allows to enter "Target" values with a click of a
single button.

4. Viewer. The Viewer now has the option of exporting DXF
files without putting each survey on a separate layer. This
is useful for drawing programs that don't handle layers
properly.

5. Viewer. The Viewer now has the option of exporting "Tick
Marks" at the LRUD points instead of the full polygon models.
There are also several options for the way the marks are
displayed.

6. CaveX. CaveX now supports the use of joysticks. This
allows you to fly in realtime around and through the cave
passages.

7. Viewer. The Viewer now allows you to export a scale bar
and north arrow with DXF file.

8. Viewer. The Viewer has improved "Views" capability,
including simplier editing, and saving.

9. Cavedit. The "Block Survey Modify" feature now allows you
to change the the Units settings for large blocks of surveys.

10. Viewer. The Viewer now supports modulo depth bar ticks.
This means that the depth bar ticks can be placed so that
they occur at even intervals like 10, 20, 30, or 25, 50, 100,
etc.

11. Compiler. The Compiler now keeps track and displays the
longest and shortest shots in the cave.

12. Viewer. The Viewer now supports a profile mode for DXF
export. This is useful for 2D drawing programs that cannot
rotate the drawing in 3D.

13. Viewer. The Viewer can now transfer selected surveys from
the "Find Survey" tool to the "Complex Plotting" options.
This enables to quickly find and selectively color surveys.

14. Viewer. The Viewer now has extensive support for graphing
Azimuth and Inclination "Rose" Diagrams. It also has the
ability to create Depth Histograms. You have complete control
over the graphs including, the number of bands, band
thickness, the colors and fonts. The graphs can be resized to
virtually any size or shape. You can graph by frequency or
total passage length. You can set a minimum passage length,
which allows you to filter out the effects short passages and
more clearly see dominate patterns. You can also focus on
specific depths, which allows you to find different fracture
patterns in different rock straita. You can produce 90, 180,
and 360 degree diagrams. The 360 degree roses can use the
passage slope to show water flow direction. You can click on
any of the graphs to highlight all the passages in the cave
that match mouse position on the graph. You can move the
mouse accross any of the graphs to get exact angle, magnitude
and depths. All graphs can be copied to the clipboard or
saved to a file.

===========================================================================
10-23-99
===========================================================================

1. CaveX. CaveX has improved rotation and pan controls. There
are now pan and rotations buttons on the tool bar. There are
also improved frame pan and rotation, including object and
camera referenced rotations.

2. CaveX. CaveX now has a one step texturing proceedure. The
program now has a built-in limestone texture that gives a
rock-like appearance to the passages.

3. Compiler. The Compiler now allows you to print the list of
errors that appears in the error log.

4. Viewer. The Viewer now has the ability to save movie files
to disk. There is now much more extensive ability to edit the
movie frames.

5. Compiler. The Compiler can now save a set of default
settings. This means that you can set the Compiler to run
with a specific set of value each time it runs, without
manually setting the options.

6. Compiler. I fixed a problem where the Compiler produced
incorrect passage wall dimensions when when the LRUDs were
associated with To station and the shot was a backsight.

7. CaveX. CaveX now has the capability of flying around and
through the cave image using simple mouse movements. I am
currently getting solid modeling speeds of 20 frames per
second and 2 million polygons per second on 20 mile long
caves. With Gouraud shading and limestone photo texturing,
the frame rate is still 10 frames per second and 600 thousand
polygons per second.

8. Viewer. The Viewer can now export DXF files compatabile
with AutoCad versions 12, 13 and 14. The files can include
passage wall models, station labels and surveys as separate
layers. You even have control over each the layer's colors.

9. Viewer. The Viewer now has features that allow you to
"fly" around and through the cave using simple mouse
movements. It also now supports "live" tracking of the 3D
Compass to give even smoother and more realistic rotations.

===========================================================================
7-25-99
===========================================================================

1. Viewer. Improved the color rendering of the background
bitmap images. This results in more accurate color rendering
of topographic maps as backgrounds to the line plots.

2. Compiler. Improved the error reporting for MAK files. Bad
link stations are now reported with correct subfile.

3. Project Manager. Fixed several problems that occurred when
working with projects that had some files in one directory
and some in another. This occurred where surveys were linked
in using the "Full Path" option.

4. Project Manager. Improved the file opening dialog box so
the user has a choice of All Cave Files, Make Files and Data
Files.

5. Cave Editor. Fixed several problems that can occur when
illegal characters are entered into the cave name, survey
name, survey comment, survey team and shot comments fields.
This usually occurred when someone copied strings from the
clipboard that had carriage returns embedded in them.

6. Viewer. The progam can now reconfigure itself when the
user changes screen resolution. This featue may not work
under Windows 3.1.

7. Viewer. Fixed a problem where the Shadow Box menus ceased
to work.

8. Viewer. The Viewer now has the ability to vertically
magnify the plot. This is useful where you are working with a
relatively flat cave or cave that is broad. Increasing the
vertical magnification allows you to see the subtle vertical
features in the cave.

9. Viewer. The Viewer now has the ability to set a exact
rotations in the same way it sets exact scales.

10. Cave Editor. The Cave Editor has been improved so that it
takes advantage of the higher resolution displays and larger
monitors. The program allows the window to expand to full
size and the various editing screens expand with it. In other
words more rows and columns from the survey are visible on
the screen. This means, for example, on a 1024 by 768
resolution display, 20 lines of survey and all columns are
visible without scrolling.

11. Cave Editor. Fixed a problem where the editor could not
save a new file if the new survey name had a period in it.
For example, the survey name "109.6" would cause a problem.
The problem was caused by the program creating a filename
with two periods in it ("109.6.DAT") and Windows rejects this
name without giving an error. The program now substitutes
dashes "-" for periods.

===========================================================================
2-15-99
===========================================================================

1. Viewer. Fixed a problem with "Views" feature where it
would not work properly in countries where a comma is used as
a decimal point. I always seem to forget to deal with the
decimal point problem.

2. Cave Editor. Fixed a bug where Page Up, Page Down, Home
and End would lose a partially entered value.

3. Cave Editor. Fixed a bug where various repair options
would not work correctly with missing data.

4. Editor, Project Manager, and Viewer. All three programs
now save the last five files you used in the file menu. This
makes it easy to open recently used files.

5. Cave Compiler. Cleaned up the statistics display so that
the columns line up, the number of stations is more accurate,
and the headings are correct.

6. Cave Compiler. Fixed a bug where the Compiler would not
correctly compile a file where all the shots in the last
survey were excluded. This caused the cave to disappear if
you tried to zoom in from the Viewer.

7. DEM Reader. Fixed several bugs in the DEM Reader. Fixed a
problem where the bottom part of some 7.5 minute DEMs were
cut off. Fixed several problems that occurred in countries
where comma is used as the decimal point.

8. Project Manager. The Manipulate Survey has option has been
simplified so there is less risk of losing surveys.
Originally, the Manipulate Surveys option allowed you to open
two data files and copy and move between them. With two files
open, it was easy to lose track of surveys and accidently
delete surveys. The current version only allows one source
and one destination file. Only the destination can be
modified.

9. DEM Reader. Sometimes the area you are working with is
near the edge of a DEM files. The DEM Reader is now capable
of merging two DEM files. This allows you to center your
terrain models on any location. Files can be merged east-west
or north-south. A pan factor setting allows you to center
your merged file location in the two files. You can also
center on corner by first merging east-west files, then
north-south.

10. Project Manager. Fixed a bug where the Project Manager
didn't properly enable and disable buttons if you deleted the
last file in a project.

11. Viewer. Fixed a bug that occurred if you switched to
Zoomed Mode, zoomed further into the cave and then switched
to back to Overview Mode. The result would be that the
selection box would be the wrong size.

12. Viewer. The Viewer now has the ability to color cave
passages according to the size and shape of the passage. The
program analyzes the height, width, and cross sectional area
and can color passages that fit into categories. The
catagories include: Crawlway, Stoopway, Walking, Fissure,
Canyon, Tube, Borehole and Climbs/Pits. Coloring specific
passage types allows you to analyze the geology, and
speologenesis. For example, you can easily see areas where
there are vadose canyons or phreatic tubes. You can also pick
routes through a cave that avoid crawlways, climbs or pits.

13. CaveX. There is now a new COMPASS program for viewing
caves called CaveX. CaveX uses Mircrosoft DirectX technology
to creates very realistic three-dimensional models of a cave.
The capabilities include full three-dimension models with
smooth rounded walls, shadowing with moveable light sources,
face coloring, background images and many other features. The
passages can be textured with photographs limestone giving
very realistic, rock-like passages. Because of the speed and
power of DirectX, the models can moved and animated in
realtime.

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The Latest Features, Enhancements and Bug Fixes Revision History: 1999 through 2022

The Latest Features, Enhancements and Bug Fixes
Revision History: 1999 through 2022