Golden Software enhances surface mapping package

Image: Golden Software

Golden Software’s Surfer package, designed for 3D surface mapping, now provides robust subsurface visualization and modeling functionality by incorporating many true 3D gridding and visualization tools.

With the enhanced functionality, users can now model an additional variable, a C variable, such as a contaminant or chemical concentration, along with the traditional X, Y, Z values. Surfer also includes the ability to create a 2D map of a slice-through 3D grid, which users can move up and down through the grid, illustrating how the C value changes with depth.

Part of Surfer’s enhancements is isosurface creation, enabling visualization of the 3D grid in the 3D view as an isosurface, providing another way to see how C data varies with depth or elevation. The new 3D-rendered volume functionality also allows users to visualize the 3D grid in the 3D view as a solid body by assigning colors to different C values, highlighting variations in the data.

Golden Software has released a beta version of Surfer simultaneously with the new version to give users a trial of the new features while they are still in development.

The company states that the software is suitable for geologists, geophysicists, hydrologists and environmental engineers.