Contour Maps
Surfer contour maps give you full control over all map parameters. You can accept the Surfer intelligent defaults to automatically create a contour map, or double-click a map to easily customize map features.
Display contour maps over any contour range and contour interval, or specify only the contour levels you want to display on the map. And with Surfer you can add color fill between contours to produce dazzling displays of your maps, or produce gray scale fills for dramatic black and white printouts.
Create colorful contour maps with custom levels, colors, and a color scale!
Contour Map Features
- Automatic or user-defined contour intervals and ranges
- Full control over contour label format, font, frequency, placement, and spacing
- Drag contour labels to place them exactly where you want them
- Automatic or user-defined color for contour lines
- Color fill between contours, either user-specified or as a custom color map of your choice
- Save and load custom color map files for the exact desired display
- Use one of the built-in presets as the color map
- Full control over hachures
- Save and load contour map level files that contain all the level information, so you can easily and quickly create contour maps with consistent properties
- Regulate smoothing of contour lines
- Blank contour lines in areas where you don't want to show any data
- Specify color for blanked regions, or make them transparent
- Add color scale
- Create any number of contour maps on a page
- Add base, vector, shaded relief, image, or post map layers to contour map layers
- Drape contour map layers over 3D surfaces or 3D wireframes for dramatic displays
- Export contours in 3D DXF and 3D SHP formats
- Adjust the layer opacity
Individual contour labels can be dragged to a new location,
new labels can be added and individual labels can be deleted.
3D Surface Maps
The 3D surface map uses shading and color to emphasize your data features. Change the lighting, display angle and tilt with a click of the mouse. Overlay several surface maps to generate informative block diagrams.
Create exciting 3D surface maps from your XYZ data!
Image courtesy of Igor Yashayaev, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Fisheries and Oceans, Canada.
3D Surface Map Features
- Specify surface color gradation, shininess, base fill and line color
- Control mesh line frequency, color, style, surface offset
- Set lighting horizontal and vertical angles, ambient, diffuse, and specular properties
- Overlay contour maps, image maps, post maps, shaded relief maps, raster and vector base maps, and other surface maps for spectacular presentations
- Choose overlay resample method and resolution, color modulation (blending) of surface and overlays
- Save and load custom color map files for the exact desired display
- Use one of the built-in presets as the color map
- Add color scales to explain the data values corresponding to each color
- Disable the display of blanked grid nodes or map the blanked areas to a specific Z level
Combining surface maps is an excellent technique to visually compare data sets.
Image courtesy of Igor Yashayaev, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Fisheries and Oceans, Canada.
Overlay surface maps to visually depict changes with depth!
Image Maps
Surfer image maps use different colors to represent elevations of a grid file. Surfer automatically blends colors between percentage values so you end up with a smooth color gradation over the entire map. You can add color anchors at any percentage point between 0 and 100. Each anchor point can be assigned a unique color, and the colors are automatically blended between adjacent anchor points. This allows you to create color maps using any combination of colors. Add a color scale to show the values of the different colors! Image maps can be created independently of other maps, or can be combined with other map layers. They can be scaled, resized, limited and moved.
Customize your image map by adding color, including a color scale, and
overlaying it with other map layers to make the map as informative as
possible! The above map is created from an image map of Colorado
elevation overlaid with a base map layer showing the county boundaries.
Image courtesy of Igor Yashayaev,
Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Fisheries and Oceans, Canada.
Image Map Features
Shaded Relief Maps Shaded Relief Map Features
Colorful and smooth image maps can be combined with base maps and
contour maps to create informative displays. Image courtesy of Igor
Yashayaev, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Canada.
Create detailed shaded relief maps! This map shows a turbidite fan
and was created with multi-beam echo-sounder data obtained
in the Caribbean Sea
Combine a shaded relief map with contour and base map features.
Post Maps
Post maps show XY locations with fixed size symbols or proportionally scaled symbols of any color. Create post maps independent of other maps on the page, or combined with other map layers. For each posted point, specify the symbol and label type, size, and angle. Also create classed post maps that identify different ranges of data by automatically assigning a different symbol or color to each data range. Post your sample locations, well locations, or original data point locations on a contour map to show the distribution of data points on the map, and to demonstrate the accuracy of the gridding methods you use.
Use post maps to display the location of your XY data.
Different symbols are used to display different ranges of data in classed post maps. Here, a classed post map is overlaid on a wireframe map and 3D label lines have been added to lift the symbols up off the map surface.
Post Map Features
3D Wireframe Maps 3D Wireframe Map Features
Vector Maps Instantly create vector maps in Surfer to show direction and magnitude of data at points on a map. You can create vector maps from information in one grid or two separate grids. The two components of the vector map, direction and magnitude, are automatically generated from a single grid by computing the gradient of the represented surface. At any given grid node, the direction of the arrow points in the direction of the steepest descent. The magnitude of the arrow changes depending on the steepness of the descent. Two-grid vector maps use two separate grid files to determine the vector direction and magnitude. The grids can contain Cartesian or polar data. With Cartesian data, one grid consists of X component data and the other grid consists of Y component data. With polar data, one grid consists of angle information and the other grid contains length information. Overlay vector maps on contour or wireframe maps to enhance the presentation! A vector map of Mt. St. Helens overlaid on a contour map (left) and wireframe map (right). Use a color scale bar or legend to indicate the magnitude of the arrows. Vector Map Features
Surfer wireframe maps provide an impressive three dimensional display of your data. Wireframes are created by connecting Z values along lines of constant X and Y. Use color zones, independent XYZ scaling, orthographic or perspective projections at any tilt or rotation angle, and different combinations of X, Y and Z lines to produce exactly the surface you want. Drape a color-filled contour map over a wireframe map to create the most striking color or black-and-white representations of your data. The possibilities are endless.
A wireframe map can be used to display any combination of X,Y, and Z lines.
A USGS SDTS DEM file was used to create this map and color zones were defined for the X and Y lines.
- Create vector maps based on one grid or two grids.
- Define arrow style, color, and frequency
- Symbol color may be fixed, based on vector magnitude or based on a grid file
- Save and load custom color map files for the exact desired display
- Use one of the built-in presets as the color map
- Display color scale bars and vector scale legends
- Scale the arrow shaft length, head length, and width
- Control vector symbol origin
- Choose from linear, logarithmic, or square root scaling methods
Adjust the layer opacity
Base Maps
| Surfer can import maps in many different formats to display geographic information. You can combine base maps with other maps in map overlays, or can create stand-alone base maps independent of other maps on the page. You can load any number of base maps on a page. It is easy to overlay a base map on a contour or surface wireframe map, allowing you to display geographic information in combination with the three dimensional data.
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Base Map Features
Map Layers Adding multiple map layers to your map gives you a way to combine different types of data in one map. For example, you can drape a georeferenced image over a 3D surface map, overlay multiple base maps with a contour map, or plot a post map with contours over a wireframe map. And because you can add any number of map layers to a map, you can show any amount of data on a single map. You are limited only by your imagination! This map was created by adding two contour map layers, a base map layer and a wireframe map layer to display contaminate spread. Overlay several surface maps to generate informative block diagrams. This image illustrates the geology of the Great Lake Ladoga on the margin of the Baltic (Fennoscandian) Shield. Effortlessly produce vivid and stunning maps that display an array of data! Image courtesy of Igor Yashayaev, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Canada. Overlay multiple map layers and adjust the transparency of the upper layers to see the lower layers beneath! This example shows a partially transparent contour map overlaid with a georeferenced image file imported as a base map.
(How do I create a block diagram?)
Stacking Maps
Stack multiple 2D maps to see multiple layers!
Stack and rotate maps for the best presentation possible!
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Customize Your Map! Make your map look its best by customizing it to fit your needs! Surfer offers numerous map features to enhance the look of your map. Use Surfer defaults, or customize your map by including scale bars, editing colors, lines and fill styles, showing only portions of a map, adjusting the scale and setting axis properties!Map Features
Other Customizations
Superior Gridding
The gridding methods in Surfer allow you to produce accurate contour, surface, wireframe, vector, image, and shaded relief maps from your XYZ data. The data can be randomly dispersed over the map area, and Surfer's gridding will interpolate your data onto a grid. Use Surfer default settings or choose from twelve different gridding methods. Each gridding method provides complete control over the gridding parameters, so you can produce exactly the map you want. If your data are already collected in a regularly spaced rectangular array, you can create a map directly from your data. Computer generated contour maps have never been more accurate. Gridding Features Variograms Use the variogram modeling subsystem to quantitatively assess the spatial continuity of data. Variograms may be used to select an appropriate variogram model when gridding with the Kriging algorithm. Surfer uses a variogram grid as a fundamental internal data representation and once this grid is built, any experimental variogram can be computed instantaneously.
Variogram Features Faults and Breaklines Define faults and breaklines when gridding your data. Faults act as barriers to the information flow, and data on one side of the fault will not be directly used to calculate grid node values on the other side of the fault. Breaklines include Z values. When Surfer sees a breakline, it uses the Z value of the breakline in combination with nearby data points to calculate the grid node value. Unlike faults, breaklines are not barriers to information flow and the gridding algorithm can cross the breakline to use a point on the other side to calculate a grid node value. Use breaklines to define streamlines, ridges, and other breaks in slopes.The gridding methods that support faults are: Inverse Distance to a Power, Minimum Curvature, Nearest Neighbor, and Data Metrics. The gridding methods that support breaklines are: Inverse Distance to a Power, Kriging, Minimum Curvature, Nearest Neighbor, Radial Basis Function, Moving Average, Data Metrics, and Local Polynomial. Grid Functions In addition to creating maps, you can perform a variety of functions using grid files. Just a few of the possibilities include:
Supported grid file formats are: ADF, AM, AN?, ASI, BIL, BIN, BIP, BMP, BSQ, BW, COL, CPS-3, DAT, DCM, DDF, DEM, DIC, DOS, DT?, ECW, ERS, FLD, FLT, GIF, GRD, GXF, HDF, HDR, IMG, INFO, JPEG, JPG, LAT, PCX, PNG, PNM/PPM/PGM/PBM, RAS, RAW, RGB, RGBA, RST, SID, STK, SUN, TGA, TIF, TIFF, VTK, X, XIMG, ZMAP, and ?10g. Using USGS and SRTM Data
Object Manager
The object manager makes the editing of any object simple. It displays all the objects in the plot document in an easy-to-use hierarchical tree arrangement. Double click on objects in the object manager to easily edit them, check or uncheck the check boxes next to their name to show or hide them, drag and drop objects to rearrange the order in which they are drawn, and overlay maps by dragging and dropping map layers from one map frame into another! Select any object or map layer in the Object Manager for easy deletion. A Powerful Contouring, Gridding, and Surface Mapping Surfer is a contouring and 3D surface mapping program that runs under Microsoft Windows. It quickly and easily converts your data into outstanding contour, 3D surface, 3D wireframe, vector, image, shaded relief, and post maps. Virtually all aspects of your maps can be customized to produce exactly the presentation you want. Producing publication quality maps has never been quicker or easier. |
