SonarWiz Quarterly Highlights - 2016 Q1 · 2016_Q1_Highlights.rev1.pdf Chesapeake Technology, Inc....

SonarWiz Quarterly Highlights - 2016 Q1

Revision 1.0,4/30/2016

Chesapeake Technology, Inc.

eMail: [email protected]

Main Web site: http://www.chesapeaketech.com

Support Web site: http://www.chestech-support.com

1605 W. El Camino Real, Suite 100

Mountain View, CA 94040

Tel: 650-967-2045

Fax: 650-450-9300

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.chesapeaketech.com/

http://www.chestech-support.com/

2016_Q1_Highlights.rev1.pdf Chesapeake Technology, Inc. copyright 2016-2017

Q1 2016 [email protected] 650-967-2045

Table of Contents 1 2016 - Q1 - SonarWiz - Most Significant Enhancements .................................................... 3

2 Categorized SonarWiz Enhancements – 2016 Q1 .............................................................. 4

2.1 General Enhancements affecting all functional categories ............................................ 5

2.1.1 Production release of the 64-bit SonarWiz ..................................................... 5

2.1.2 New Project Settings (MML) File 10-deep Backup-Queue Design ......................... 6

2.2 Bathymetry-specific Enhancements .............................................................................. 7

2.2.1 New Inverse Weighted Distance Gridding - smooths over grid gaps ...................... 7

2.3 Sidescan-specific Enhancements ............................................................................... 10

2.4 Sub-bottom-specific Enhancements ............................................................................ 14

2.4.1 Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) import support ................................................. 14

2.5 Real-time Data Acquisition Enhancements ................................................................. 17

2.5.1 Support for NMEA-0183 HDG heading message ................................................. 17



1 2016 - Q1 - SonarWiz - Most Significant Enhancements

Functional Category Enhancements Count General enhancements (affects all categories) 12

Bathymetry post-processing enhancements 14

Sidescan post-processing enhancements 6

Sub-bottom post-processing enhancements 4

Magnetometry enhancements 1

Real-time data acquisition enhancements 1



2 Categorized SonarWiz Enhancements – 2016 Q1

Consolidated release notes detail proposed for the 2016 Q1 (January, February, March 2016) releases. (Enhancements Only), sorted and rank-ordered by functional category. Suggested bullet point topics for newsletters are in blue.

Highlights Summary Table

Section - Functional Category Highlight Description 2.1 General Improvements 1. Our most significant general improvement was

the production release of full 64-bit SonarWiz! We have a complete PDF describing the benefits of this awesome new option. 2. A significant new MML file backup-queue design was added, to protect projects from loss of important project settings, safeguarding all your work results better than ever.

2.2 Bathymetry post-processing 1. A new gridding method called Inverse Distance Weighted method, lets you fill in small gaps in your backscatter and bathymetry grids, to overcome survey coverage quality issues. 2. New and improved support was added for bathy processing of HSX RMB and RSS records, Kongsberg EM302 multi-beam, and Imagenex Delta T bathymetry files.

2.3 Sidescan post-processing JSF import was upgraded with 2 new options to (1) view your SS JSF file NMEA message data, and (2) choose NMEA message preference over SS JSF sonar packet data, as the choice for date, time, depth, and heading information source.

2.4 Sub-bottom post-processing 1. The most dramatic new SB feature is support for Mala type Ground Penetrating Radar data import and post-processing. 2. A second helpful improvement is the ability to blank the water column when applying gains, independent of whether gains are applied at time zero, or at the detected seafloor.

Magnetometry post-processing Mag anomaly reports have been upgraded to 64-bit format, and now can be exported to modern XLSX format EXCEL files.

2.5 Real-time Data acquisition Navigation processing in real-time now supports the NMEA-0183 HDG message choice, in addition to RMC, VTG and other previous options.



NOTE: Highlights items listed above, are presented below in bold.

2.1 General Enhancements affecting all functional categories

2.1.1 Production release of the 64-bit SonarWiz

SonarWiz is now released with some super efficient 64-bit options for math and graphics. Look into our www.chestech-support.com web-site at the SonarWiz downloads area, to find both 32-bit and 64-bit production versions available:

http://www.chestech-support.com/



SonarWiz now uses advanced 3D graphics supported by DirectX11, and can take full advantage of the PC OS and chipsets like Windows7, 8, and 10, when they are 64-bit versions. Your SonarWiz 64-bit version can use more RAM directly, and faster, so you will notice that operations take less time. It really pays now to have more RAM than the minimum required 4GB for post-processing. See the SonarWiz FAQs, or the CTI 64-bit Tech Note, for a more detailed explanation of the benefits, here:

Tech Note: CTI_TN-2016-01-21_64-bit_SonarWiz.pdf

2.1.2 New Project Settings (MML) File 10-deep Backup-Queue Design

Your project settings have always been kept in the precious, yet solitary file, <myProject>.mml. New in 2016 Q1 is a safe-keeping design to safeguard your project settings like never before. Check our you project BACKUP folder sometime to see the 10-deep queue of backup copies of the project MML file, created once per session, so that you will likely never lose any more than a single session of settings changes, should a power outage or similar interruption affect your work.

The most recent settings filename will show at the top, and provides quick access to restoration of all the project variables you need, in event of an outage:

http://www.chestech-support.com/download/ctisupport/Sonarwiz_6/UserDocs/CTI_TN-2016-01-21_64-bit_SonarWiz.pdf



2.2 Bathymetry-specific Enhancements

2.2.1 New Inverse Weighted Distance Gridding - smooths over grid gaps

Sometimes a backscatter or bathymetry depth mosaic has small gaps - it happens:

The median-depth grid faithfully repeats those gaps:

But try right-clicking GRIDS and then selecting CREATE NEW GRID from the drop menu:



and choose the new Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) type DEPTH grid:

This type of grid is most effective where gaps are no more than x5 the grid resolution (e.g. with a 10cm resolution grid - this easily smooths over 50cm gaps) :



Similarly, the backscatter data in this same project showed a set of small gaps:



But gridding using the AMPLITUDE data, and selecting the IDW type grid, gave better results, filling all the small coverage gaps:

2.3 Sidescan-specific Enhancements

JSF format sidescan import just got better! Here is a powerful new import option to try: NMEA priority navigation import. The way this works, is a bit like the previous navigation priority choices. You are selecting the navigation date, time, and position data though, to come from the embedded NMEA message information, stored during the sonar survey, into your JSF file.



Ordinarily, you would use the navigation WITHOUT this check-box checked, from a primary source of date, time, and position data feeding into DISCOVER, and recorded into the ping-records of the JSF file. But in case your ping date/time was LOCAL TIME, for example, and you prefer to use UTC from the NMEA messages, or prefer the POSITION data from the NMEA messages, these are also available in the JSF file. You opt to use them by checking this checkbox:

Then the NMEA date, time, position and heading data will be used instead of those recorded into the per-ping records of your JSF file, when it imports into a CSF file (compact sonar format) inside SonarWiz.



To decide whether you prefer the per-ping date/time position data, you may use a new TOOLS -> JSF -> Extract NMEA message data option to see the NMEA message data detail this way:



Example output:

You can decide if the JSF time or NMEA message time is preferred. Likewise you can use Tools -> JSF -> Extract JSF Navigation, to see the full JSF file position data (typically latitude, longitude) , and compare that to your NMEA data, to see which you prefer.



2.4 Sub-bottom-specific Enhancements

2.4.1 Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) import support

In what may be the most dramatic new sub-bottom feature for SonarWiz in year, we have implemented direct file import support for reading Mala Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) *.RAD files as sub-bottom profiler data.

*.RAD type GPR files contain position data just like sub-bottom sonar data, and they import just by specifying the file type:

Once imported, the navigation track lines of your GPR survey can be presented atop a basemap layer, just like other sub-bottom data. The difference will be that is likely a terrestrial basemap, rather than a nautical chart:



You can see your GPR data in profile view:

Several files at a time:

Or shown with a basemap image superimposed on top as a ground-level surface:



Existing customers - please contact our staff at [email protected] to get a free trial of SonarWiz sub-bottom post-processing added to your license key (requires current EMA).



2.5 Real-time Data Acquisition Enhancements

2.5.1 Support for NMEA-0183 HDG heading message

Any real-time data acquisition license add-on to your SonarWiz license key provides full access to the DATA ACQUISITION GUI tab menu:

Now the NAVIGATION dialog, where you configure what incoming serial GPS messages you will receive, contains a new option ofr the NMEA-0183-format HDG message, in addition to all previous options:

:

Why use HDG? Sometimes that is a supported message type in your particular GPS unit, and is preferred for that reason. The message format is like this:



Existing customers, please contact us at [email protected], for a free trial of any real-time acquisition license feature. They can add it to your license key (current EMA required), so you can see the benefits of recording data directly in SonarWiz!

mailto:[email protected]

SonarWiz Quarterly Highlights - 2016 Q1 · 2016_Q1_Highlights.rev1.pdf Chesapeake Technology, Inc....

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