Cave Converter is a program for converting cave survey data from one format into another. It can read and write a variety of cave survey data file formats.
Download the latest version here: CaveConverter.zip
Cave Converter is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Cave Converter is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. |
The latest version of the source code can be downloaded from here: CaveConverter_src.zip
Older releases can be downloaded from the release archive page.
The current release is able to read the following formats:
and write the following formats:
Cave Converter is written in Java and is available as a JAR file. You will need a Java runtime (v6 or later) installed on your computer to run the converter. The JAR file can be run with the following command line arguments:
The first argument is the name of the file containing the data you want to convert, and second argument is the name of the file you want to be created in the new format. The next two arguments are single letter format codes to indicate the input and output data formats. Finally some option codes can be specified. The format codes are as follows:
The following options can also be specified:
If no splay option is specified then splays are output by default in Survex files, but are excluded by default from Toporobot files (as Toporobot file export does not distinguish between splays and other legs so all splays exported to this file format become legs).
Here are some example command lines to illustrate some useful conversions:
This last example shows how editable survey data can be regenerated from Survex .3d files via the Convert to DXF option provided by Survex (right-click on a .3d file to select this option from the pop-up menu on Windows). This is also how you can generate a DXF file to convert to Toporobot using the Cave Converter, enabling existing cave surveys to be imported into PocketTopo regardless of the original Survex format data. So if your Survex file is not readable by the Cave Converter (because it contains diving data, or different units or data ordering than the default) then you can still process it using Survex to generate a 3d file and convert that to DXF using Survex. Then convert it to Toporobot format using Cave Converter and import that file into PocketTopo. This enables existing surveys to be loaded into PocketTopo so that new data can be tied into the known cave on surveying trips.
Converting Survex data to Toporobot will cause all the survey station numbers and series names to get regenerated unfortunately. This is because Toporobot format requires survey series to consist only of linear chains of survey stations. Junctions are not allowed in series. This means that data from other formats cannot be simply converted, so all stations are renumbered and reorganised into new numbered series to conform to these constraints of the Toporobot format.
Some example Windows batch files are included in the download to illustrate the most useful conversions. You can edit the file names in these batch files to the names of the files you want to convert and then run the converter by double-clicking on the batch file in Windows Explorer. If you don't get any output when running the converter from a batch file then run the program from a command prompt rather than double clicking on a batch file and you will see the errors output. Send me your data file and I will work on a bug fix. I can be contacted by email: drfootleg [at] gmail.com
While Cave Converter can regenerate survey data files from DXF files generated from Survex .3d files, you will not get back the complete original data. What you do get is the equivalent calculated survey leg data (tape, compass, clino) for the positions of the stations in the DXF file. So any loop closure corrections and instrument calibrations will have already been applied to the data. This feature is really intended as a way to recover some sort of workable data when the original data has been lost and only the 3d files remain. Some small rounding errors occur during the Conversion to DXF from the .3d file, so the exact positions of survey stations and the cave length reported may differ by a few cm compared to the original data. This is because in the DXF file, Survex has rounded all station positions to the nearest 1cm.
The Survex file reader does not currently read passage data blocks. So any passage data blocks will be removed if a Survex file is read in and written out again. However if the Survex file contains splays and the lrud option is specified on the command line then new passage data blocks will be generated from the splays and replace any previously present passage data blocks in the file which is generated.
If you are reading a downloaded copy of this help page then check for a more recent version online here: Cave Converter Information Page.