SeisWare Howto's

How to create Oil and Gas symbols for PowerPoint slides

Sept 21, 2005


Anna just showed me how to copy a font file to my C:\WINDOWS\Fonts directory so it is available for my Microsoft applications. I currently like using the ESRI fonts shown to the right.

They are simple to use, just select the ESRI font, select the font size and click on the appropriate letter. A dry hole symbol is an uppercase W, gas well symbol uppercase X. Here are some True Type Font files to try.

Just down load and save these files to your C:\WINDOWS\Fonts folder! Click here to see what more of these fonts look like.

I just disabled the link to these files, you should be able to find them if you are ArcView or Surfer installed on your system.

PS: Be sure to copy these files to all the machines you plan on using. If you don't you will find you have a lot of W's and a few L, M and X's on your map!

How to create Culture Line files from SEGP navigation files

April 18, 2005

Here is a simple awk script that can take a SEGP navigation file and break it up into different colour coded culture lineament files for your map. This feature is useful to help you manage different seismic lists, say files you have from files you might want to purchase.

Here's what the input SEGP file looks like and what the output SEGP file looks like! Here's how I do it:


 nawk -f ~ekeyser/Ak/segp2lin.ak < eg_segp.txt  >  eg_pha.txt
You need this script to make it work.

How to use SeisWare in Conference Rooms

March 16, 2005

I tried many different ways to present a SeisWare interpretation in conference rooms with either a single or dual projection systems.


Remote Desktop Connection
The best connection for most situations is to use the functionality of Windows XP, the Remote Desktop Connector. Select (start), (all programs), (accessories), (communications) and (remote Destop connection). Be sure you know the full name for your computer!

Here's what the connection looks like to the left. George is the name of my computer!
Here are the different ways I have tried to use:

  1. Remote log onto your workstation computer.
    • Advantages - Fast workstation computer performance, almost as fast as working on your computer, easy to set up, it takes just a few seconds
    • Disadvantages - Your desk top is only 1024x768 pixels in most conference rooms, my workstation desktop is 3072x1024. You must resize all of your SeisWare windows. If you are in a dual projector room, you can only 1600 pixels of the 2560 pixels of our dual projectors. This is a bummmmer.
  2. Install SeisWare locally on the conference room computer and move your data locally with a USB drive.
    • Advantages - You have the full resolution of the conference room computer, if it's a dual projector room you have 2560x1024 to show your interpretation
    • Disadvantages - Your conference room computer is not nearly as fast as your dual processor cpu on your desktop.
  3. Install SeisWare locally on the conference room computer and access the data across the network
    • Advantages - You have the full resolution of the conference room computer, if it's a dual projector room you have 2560x1024 to show your interpretation.
    • Disadvantages - Your conference room computer is not nearly as fast as your dual processor cpu on your desktop. Accessing your data across the network requires a mapping of drives on the conference room computer, a pain but dooable. The total pain is how slow slow it is to suck data across the network. What takes three seconds takes minutes. Totally unacceptable.
  4. Haul your three headed computer to the work room and hook up three projection monitors.
    • Advantages - Great idea, fast computer, three projector monitors.
    • Disadvantages - Totally unacceptable, the monitors are not matched in colour, their display shape from a table top is not rectangular, they screens are only 768 pixels high, numerous cables to hook up.

SeisWare tricks with Raster images

March 14, 2005

I have found that the ability to display Raster images as a back drop to my Seismic Base map has some real advantages.


Import Raster Images
When I started using Rasters I found I was dealing with far too much data. I had a total of nine, 187 meg images over my prospect area. I used Irfanview to examine the images. I determined that they were 8000 pixels in both the X and Y direction. There also seemed to be a funny little file ending in .tfw 
            1.2500000000
            0.0000000000
            0.0000000000
           -1.2500000000
       500000.6250000002
      7699999.3749537840
This sure looked like a corner point to me, I guessed it was the upper left. I then guessed that the 1.25 was the dimension for each pixel. Wait a minute, my seismic bin size is 30meters, why do I need 1.25 meters for my air photo?

Next step was to use Irfanview to extract every tenth pixel in both the X and Y direction. I use (Batch conversion), (Use advanced options), (RESIZE). Now my 187 meg files are only 1.87 meg in size, 100 times faster to display and my photo is still at 12.5 meters spacing.


The last step is to get the data into SeisWare. That's easy, the first step is to compute the South East corner of the image. Here is a link to my simple spreadsheet that takes the data above and computes the South East corner. The last step with SeisWare is to select (Raster), (Import Raster Images), find the image and copy the Top Left and Bottom Right XY points. I like selecting the (Attach In Place) option to conserve space for my projects. I am now able to use Rasters 100 faster than before!

Why some Geophysicists prefer SeisX over SeisWare

Feburary 1, 2005

While SeisWare does provide many advantages over SeisX, some users still prefer to use SeisX. Here are some of the reasons they won't change!

  • SeisX has the ability to flip between multi volumes in both 2D and 3D. ie it's easy to compare a near and far offset stack with SeisX. With SeisWare it takes about 12 mouse clicks to display multiple versions of a single seismic line with SeisWare.
  • Most users do not like the way SeisWare picks poor quality data. The picks jump around far to much. I find that I have to set the Search Gate down to the sample interval (4ms) to get it to do what I want. It's been suggested that Seisware add some of the picking options of Landmark and SeisX
  • SeisX defaults to using the current map when one plots a seismic section, SeisWare requires the user create a KeyMap.emf file first.

    SeisWare 6.14 Beta Testing Results

    Feb 1, 2005

  • The crash problems seem to resolved, it looks like SeisWare 6.1 is about to be released!

    Enhancements

    Map

    • Added line styles [solid, dash, and double dash, works but in reality only for really thin lines. Try a weight of 10 and all you see is a big thick line. Needs to be fixed cause I like fat lines to highlight stuff!

    Seismic Viewer

    • SeisWare now remembers the last increment used instead of defaulting to the number 10. I'm an 8 16 kind of guy, I like having the ability to divide by two!
    • Faults, it's much better but the triangulation still goes wonky. It sort of works if you pick faults in one direction only on a 3D. Try triangulating this fault onto a 2D line and it makes no sense at all.
    • Horizon/fault contacts are now displayed in the seismic viewer when faults are displayed. We need the ability to turn faults on and the contacts off. I'd also give the user the ability to change the size of the contact symbol.
    • Bottom line, I'd still recommend using SeisX for fault picking.
    • Added the ability to automatically display curves on synthetic tracks. This one is really slick, you can place your log curves on top of your synthetic. I like placing my gamma as a green line on the left and the sonic curve as a blue line on the right.

    Log Editor

    • Tops are now displayed as one edits the curves
    • Multiple curves can be displayed during log editing.
    • Depth (TVD, Measured and Sub Sea are all shown on the status bar.

    SEGY-Y Export

    • Segment File export to segy file. We can now take a point file (SeisWare segments) and for example, the user can export a 2D segy file out of a 3D volume. One enhancement I'd like to see is to have the Destination Folder to default to somewhere in the project, perhaps under a folder called segy instead of Windows desktop!
    • Ability to export time depth tables, good.

    Well Export

    • Ability to export logs as las files, better.
    • Ability to export directional survey. Why is it when I press finish the menu is still there. Should it not go away?

    Other Bug Fixes

    • If you have no 2d in the project, and your 2D ribbons are turned off the error message telling you that your 2D ribbons are not on keeps popping up.

    New Bugs -- Critical