Survex Future

[Eric Madelaine]

Hi Olly, 

  I just got the last issue of Compass Points, and read your Survex paper.

  This was very interesting for me: it shows that I will very soon be inclined 
to use Survex again (;-). In the last 3 or 4 years, i've been using Vtopo, a 
frech program that you may not have experimented with:
	http://vtopo.free.fr/vtopo.htm
	(the pages are in french, but the software may be run in french/english/
spanish)

Vtopo had most of the features you announce for Survex 1.2 (LRUD models, 
preview and printing selection, import of surface data, coloring by 
various criteria; it has also 3D rendering and attachement of text/
cross-sections/photos/ within the survey data). One thing it hasn't (yet) 
is some mechanism for survey data structuring. 
And Survex has a lot of experimental tools coming around that may be make it 
much better in the future.

   So your paper inspired me a couple of questions:

- Have you had any contact with Vtopo author (Eric David, <vtopo@free.fr>), and 
any discussion on interfacing through the 3d format?

- Some time ago, there had been a discussion about interfacing with Toporobot 
(which has a pretty different survey structure, and interesting 3d modelisation 
features). Is there anything existing?

- Vtopo has a specific format for surface data. What are the plans with Survex/
Aven ?

- Vtopo has some export interface (at least a Garmin=like format) for 
integration of the (projected) survey onto maps. Any plan in this direction?

Eric Madelaine