Passage walls in Survex

[Andy Waddington]

Sometime before sending, Bruce Mutton typed (and on Friday 2009-02-27 sent):

> Presumably the object is to produce an accurate cave map with the minimum of
> effort, so we can focus on exploring the next cave?  

Whilst that is certainly true, you do have to allow that the effort that
goes into getting survey data and the effort that goes into processing
it take place at different times, in different places and are quite
possibly carried out by different people. Making the data faster to
process doesn't necessarily save time for the people actually going
caving and doing the surveying.

On the other hand, time spent editing survey data is often productive
in other ways and can ensure that other project members besides those
going underground become familiar with the layout and structure of the
cave. Notes taken underground are quite often rather ad hoc and may
well include offsets to walls and other features from the survey legs
without incoluding statsions. To ensure that the finished map properly
reflects all of the measurements made underground, it seems to me more
important that the processing is as powerful as possible rather than
as easy for new users as possible. But without being deliberately
obscure, as that would just increase the error rate. It has always
struck me that you don't want survey data manipulated, entered, edited
or reviewed by people who don't thoroughly understand what they are
doing...

Andy