Practical examples

Measure makes reference to the grid that is used to locate all the holes (Down hole survey coordinates of the DDH)

World is the universal grid (absolutely North-South). This system is rarely necessary because it is often parallel to Measure or Plot but can sometimes be useful especially at importation of graphical elements coming from other sources in GeotiCAD.

Since all the reference systems (Plot, Measure, and World) are identical, the following configuration:

will allow you to create sections looking N000 (PosY) ou N270 (NegX) and plan views (NegZ).

It's usually simpler to start by creating a plan view which will be very useful to locate the limits of the sections. The limits of the plan view are easily found by searching for the extents of the start coordinates of the DDHs.

The following configuration will thus allow you to create a plan view at the elevation 300 (A) with a Clipping distance of 1000 meters in Front (B) and at the Back (C) of the section. The Lower left corner of the drawing will be located at the coordinates 650 East (D) and 6000 North (E). Note that the boxes A, D et E have a pink background to indicate that these value must be given in the Plot coordinate system (also with a pink background).

The following configuration will thus allow you to create a section looking N000 located on the coordinate 6300 North (A) with a Clipping distance of 30 meters in Front (B) and at the Back (C) of the section. The Lower left corner of the drawing will be located at the coordinates 650 East (D) and the elevation 0 (E). Note that the boxes A, D et E have a pink background to indicate that these value must be given in the Plot coordinate system (also with a pink background).

Take note that at the creation of vertical sections with a plan projection, the available height for the vertical section will be reduces proportionally to the front and back clipping of the section. It is thus not usually recommended to use the plan projection when creating longitudinal sections (the front and back clipping are generally very great).

To create a section lookin N270, you only have to select a View in a the negative direction of the X axis (NegX) and to set the values of the A to E boxes according to your needs and it's done.

We just saw that when the thee coordinate systems (World, Plot, and Measure) are identical, you can easily create plan view or sections looking West or North simply by selecting one of the three Views (NegX, PosY, or NegZ) available. But how to do if you project requires sections looking to the East (N090) with longitudinal sections looking N000? You will have to define a rotation to the Plot coordinate system according to the Measure coordinate system.

Then, to trace a section looking East (N090) located at the coordinate 725 East as represented in the following plan view, (the doted line represents the trace of the section on the plan view) you can apply a rotation of 90º to the Plot coordinate system and select a PosY view. It is often difficult to calculate the coordinates of the Lower left corner of the drawing in the Plot system.

To help in this calculation, it's highly recommended to use the Coordinates calculator. Simply enter the desired coordinates (in this case 725 East and 640 North), specify the source system, and click the Calculate button. The A, D, and E boxes will be calculated automatically. You then only have to round up the values according to your needs.

Note that after the rotation of the Plot coordinate system, the value of the D box becomes negative.

The following figure thus presents the necessary settings to produce a section looking N090 located at 725 East.

A last subtlety consists in correctly setting the text of the grid. Since the rotation of the Plot system creates a negative East coordinate and that it's probably not suitable to present that coordinate on the final drawing, it will probably be preferable to use the Y axis of the Measure system rather than the Width of the Plot system.

In the next example, the DDHs are located in a coordinate system oriented North-South, but the geological target is oriented N335 with a dip to the North-East. The drilling pattern has then been established in consequence with a drilling grid parallel to the geological target where the sections are separated by 150 meters.