Qimera 1.5 FAQ 30 October 2017

Transcription

1 30 October 2017

2 1. Qimera FAQ Qimera General Qimera Data Format Specific Qimera Processing

3 Qimera FAQ This space contains the frequently asked questions for Qimera Qimera General Qimera Data Format Specific Qimera Processing 3

4 Qimera General This page contains frequently asked questions for Qimera. On this page: Can a user choose to disable the Welcome Screen? Are there hotkeys available in Qimera? What is the status of laser support in Qimera? In the Preferences, what is the Questions and answer box for? What types of raw file are supported by Qimera? Can a user choose to disable the Welcome Screen? No, this is not possible. Are there hotkeys available in Qimera? Yes there are, please see the page of Qimera User Interface for a list of the hot keys available in the Qimera use interface and the 3D Editor. What is the status of laser support in Qimera? Raw laser data is currently supported if it is logged via QINSy. It is now possible to change the vessel offsets and apply post processed navigation. It is not yet possible to use tools such as the Patch Test or Wobble Analysis tools. Non QINSy laser data can be imported as processed point files which will allow you to clean the files as part of a Dynamic Surface. In the Preferences, what is the Questions and answer box for? Qimera prompts the user at several stages for input during data import and processing operations. The user can choose "Yes/No" and can also have the project remember the answer such that the next time the program doesn't bother with asking the same question over and over. The user can reset all the "remembered" answers in the project preferences. What types of raw file are supported by Qimera? At the moment QINSy.DB files, Reson.s7k, Kongsberg.all, Generic Sensor Format.GSF, Edgetech.JSF, Elac Seabeam.XSE, R2Sonic R2SC, and Hypack.HSX files are supported as Raw Files. You can find more information on our Qimera Data Format Information page. 4

5 Qimera Data Format Specific This page contains frequently asked questions for Qimera Is the QINSy online Kalman positioning filtering used by Qimera when processing DB files? When working with QINSy data, is any part of the project necessary other then the DB files, or are the DB files self contained? Is there any benefit to copying a whole QINSy project locally before starting to work in Qimera? When working with QINSy data, is there any way to query the data after load to find the coordinate system of the imported data? With QINSy data, does the project auto-reproject to UTM if that option is left on during project creation? I would like to import my QINSy DB files that have an ROV with multibeam as well as my hull mounted multibeam system into Qimera, is this possible? When adding HSX files, the Add Raw Sonar Files dialog requests a Time Reference/Acquisition Time Zone. Is this information pulled from the HSX file? Hypack data may or may not have SVP information available during the SVP strip stage of import. What determines whether or not this info is available in the HSX? Why would you use SISQA option to process rather than Qimera? Why is Qimera not reading my Binary Navigation SBET (.out) files? Is the QINSy online Kalman positioning filtering used by Qimera when processing DB files? If you have QPDs, they come into Qimera. If you re-process the QPDs, you get new position data using Qimera's computation engine, which is different from QINSy's. There is no Kalman filtering in Qimera, we use the position stream straight from the observed values. If filtering was applied in the original QPD, it is lost. It was decided that it was better not to attempt to replicate the real-time filtering provided in QINSy, support for this type of functionality will be in a later release. When working with QINSy data, is any part of the project necessary other then the DB files, or are the DB files self contained? Is there any benefit to copying a whole QINSy project locally before starting to work in Qimera? Qimera will load the.db files and will import and convert the data from the ancillary sensors into the Qimera project. If there are pre-existing QPDs in the usual location, then Qimera will find these and you can begin creating gridded products and examining data immediately. The.db files are self contained and no other data is extracted from any other file. Qimera will never modify the.db file so you don't necessarily need to make a backup, you can work with Qimera directly in your QINSy project folder. When working with QINSy data, is there any way to query the data after load to find the coordinate system of the imported data? Yes, if you select the database in the Project Sources window you can then view the co-ordinate system in the Properties window, it will also show you the co-ordinate system of the projected qpd as well. 5

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7 With QINSy data, does the project auto-reproject to UTM if that option is left on during project creation? No, it does not. When you import.db data, Qimera inherits the projection system that was chosen in QINSy I would like to import my QINSy DB files that have an ROV with multibeam as well as my hull mounted multibeam system into Qimera, is this possible? No, at the moment this is not possible, Qimera is limited to supporting one object DB files, unless your ROV has its own associated navigation string, motion sensor etc. we do not support USBL positioning. When adding HSX files, the Add Raw Sonar Files dialog requests a Time Reference/Acquisition Time Zone. Is this information pulled from the HSX file? Hypack can be configured to record the data in the local time zone. When merging Hypack data with externally recorded data, such as POSMV or SBET files (which are both referenced to UTC), Qimera needs to be able to understand what time zone the HSX data was recorded in, if it wasn't configured to work in UTC. Unfortunately, the time zone offset relative to UTC is not recorded in the HSX file and the user must provide this information on import. Hypack data may or may not have SVP information available during the SVP strip stage of import. What determines whether or not this info is available in the HSX? A user can choose to load a profile during acquisition in Hypack, in this case, the SVP that's loaded will be written out to the.hsx file. If no SVP is 7

8 specified, then there won't be one in the HSX file. Why would you use SISQA option to process rather than Qimera? This is for Kongberg.all clients that wish to use the Kongsberg launch angle calculation algorithm instead of the QINSy algorithm, the results are very comparable and you would only want to use this if you want to re-process Kongsberg data in the same way as they would have done in real-time with the Kongsberg hardware/software. Why is Qimera not reading my Binary Navigation SBET (.out) files? The reason we don't recognise the.out extension is because it is the same extension as all of POSPac's internal data formats (about 15 files share the same extension and most of these would cause a real problem for Qimera), there is nothing in the files that indicates what file type it is. We realise asking the user to rename files is generally considered a bad practice. But in general this is a single file for a day of acquisition. And this is the only way we can be sure that the user doesn't accidentally select a wrong file, which we would just have to read and would have no way to ensure it wasn't one of the other 15 files in a POSPac project that is virtually indistinguishable. When importing POSPac SBET files, 'sbet' must be part of the base name of the file. The base name is the part of the file path preceding the extension and after the directory. If you have an associated RMS file, it must have the same naming except that 'sbet' is replaced with 'smrmsg'. If this naming convention is not used, Qimera will not be able to auto-recognize the file type. 8

9 Qimera Processing This page contains frequently asked questions for Qimera I have a skull and crossbones next to my raw files, what does this mean? How is the Suggest Cell Size Calculated when building a surface? What is the difference between Erase Invalid and Select Invalid when using the Swath Editor? In the Processing Settings Editor what is Include time series data from adjacent lines closer than *.** seconds? Should this ever been turned off or changed and if so what is the optimum time scale? In the Processing Settings Editor how is the priority sorted out and assigned in the Position, Motion, Heading Tab? Do these come from the online settings or have their own critera? What projections does QPS recommend for users who would prefer to work in unprojected space but are not able to? Does Qimera automatically recognize the source file projection for any Raw Sonar data type? Does Qimera automatically recognize the source file projection for any Processed Points data type? Does the option to export GSF files from the source file menu export all soundings to GSF regardless of status? How does export Processed Points from the source menu differ from Export Soundings in the Dynamic Surface menu? Is TPU re-calculated after SBET application? While cleaning data, if you open an area but didn t change any soundings, how does one know which areas have already been worked on? Suspect flagging was a way of testing CUBE before rejecting everything, what is the workaround for that? Will the spline filter work on the Dynamic Surface or on the files? When you have a large survey and want to apply a spline filter is is possible to constrain the filter to a smaller area or to only apply it to specific files? When working on a Dynamic surface does it matter which layer you have selected, if you have the average are you then editing the average layer? Where does Qimera display/show the Source datum extracted from the Raw Data? There some soundings from the noise at the sonar head, I don't want to see them. Can Qimera filter these soundings directly when I input the data? In Qloud the ISO-44 standard (95% Posteriori Confidence Interval) is used for the Spline filter, is this the same in Qimera? When I apply Patch Test results, the angular offsets are not entered the same for the Tx and Rx transducers in the Vessel Editor, why? I have a skull and crossbones next to my raw files, what does this mean? This means that the data you brought into Qimera doesn't contain enough information to process it. For example, a Reson.s7k file can contain only ping information (ranges and angles for the multibeam measurements) and it can be possible that there is not position, motion, SVP, etc, in the source file. Qimera cannot process this data without additional information. If you import external navigation, motion, etc, then the skull and crossbones will disappear. How is the Suggest Cell Size Calculated when building a surface? When data is imported or reprocessed, we generate a histogram of the depths in the file. When a user wants to grid a set of data, we normalize the histograms for each file and combine them into a master histogram for which we determine the depth associated with the highest count of soundings. We calculate a footprint size at that water depth based on a 1 degree beamwidth assumption and then round this up to the nearest "nice" pixel size, e.g. instead of returning 0.42 m, it would return 0.50 m. This is not meant to be an optimal or perfect cell size, it is meant to help the user who may not know anything about cell size selection in that they will be able to create a map that is reasonable in their first try. If the area covered by the selected lines has a wide range of depths, then the pixel size will not work well in both the deepest and the shallowest areas (you may get gaps or empty cells in the deep areas and you get low resolution in the shallow areas). Also, the suggested cell size does not consider the sounding density at all. What is the difference between Erase Invalid and Select Invalid when using the Swath Editor? They are two different tools that allow for manual marking of soundings as invalid. The "Erase" tool is a circle whose radius is controlled by the middle mouse wheel. Left-click and hold down the mouse button and drag the cursor to "Erase" bad soundings. This is inspired by Paint and Photoshop type cursor modes. The "Select Invalid" mode allows a user to draw a rectangle box around soundings they want to remove. Left-ciick and hold down the mouse button to draw a rectangle. Soundings in the rectangle will be flagged as bad. Edits in both modes can be undone with the "Undo" icon. In the Processing Settings Editor what is Include time series data from adjacent lines closer than *.** seconds? Should this ever been turned off or changed and if so what is the optimum time scale? It can sometimes happen that the first few pings in a data file can occur prior to the arrival of a navigation fix, for example in shallow water where the navigation comes in at 1 Hz and the mutlibeam might be pinging at 25 Hz. The same can happen at the end of a file. If we do nothing about this, you may find that gaps in coverage will occur at file breaks that occur along a survey line. 9

10 This setting allows the navigation (and other time-series data, for that matter) lookup to sneak a peek at time-series from data files that occur immediately before and after the file being processed to give additional data points to interpolate over the gap. Data files that are neighbouring in time must be within 1 sec of the requested time in order to be considered. If the user is still seeing gaps, increasing the value to a slightly higher value may address the gap. There is not a good reason to ever disable this. In the Processing Settings Editor how is the priority sorted out and assigned in the Position, Motion, Heading Tab? Do these come from the online settings or have their own critera? e.g. if an SBET file is added to the project does this have to be set as the primary motion source? The priority source that was configured in real-time during acquisition is chosen if it is possible to deduce this from the source data file (e.g..all and.db, but not.hsx and.s7k). If you add SBET or external navigation/motion, they are currently "promoted" to be the top priority source. The user can change the lookup priority in the Processing Configuration dialog box by bumping the desired data source item up to the top of the list. What projections does QPS recommend for users who would prefer to work in unprojected space but are not able to? Examples are users crossing multiple zones who do not want to create custom projections, and users in the research/scientific community who prefer working in unprojected space and prefer unprojected products. Users will need to assess what projection is most suitable for their situation. There are three extra projections that were added to the common coordinate systems to support this reprojection issue - Mercator and Polar Stereographic projections for Arctic and Antarctic but there are no plans in the immediate future for others. Does Qimera automatically recognize the source file projection for any Raw Sonar data type? The source file coordinate system and the project coordinate system are automatically recognized when importing QINSy DB files. For all other file types the coordinate information needs to be set manually. For the Kongsberg *.all and the RESON S7k formats it will assume the navigation data is in WGS84 lat/long. For Hypack HSX files these are always in a projected coordinate system which must be set manually. Does Qimera automatically recognize the source file projection for any Processed Points data type? For Processed Point data, users have to specify the projection. Qimera looks the file to make an educated guess if it's projected or geographic. If it's geographic it will default to WGS84. If it's projected, and the Project's Coordinate System is set (which always has to be projected if it's set) it will default to the Project's coordinate system. If not it will default to UTM North Zone 1. But remember, these are just default values, users still have to confirm or change them. Does the option to export GSF files from the source file menu export all soundings to GSF regardless of status? All soundings are exported, if they have been rejected for some reason (either through Blocking, Spline filtering, CUBE filtering, manual editing), then the corresponding beam is marked as "Rejected" in the GSF. GSF flag capabilities are much simpler than what is supported with QPDs so we can only mark a sounding as either good or bad in the GSF. How does export Processed Points from the source menu differ from Export Soundings in the Dynamic Surface menu? It differs from Export Soundings from the Dynamic Surface because there are more formats to choose from (instead of just XYZ). Export Processed Points allows you to specify a different Z-value if exporting ASCII and it can re-project to a different coordinate system. Probably the biggest difference is you are dealing with individual files. This means you can pick one file, or multiple to export. You can also convert them to individual files, or merge the output into one big file. With the Dynamic Surface Export Soundings, you are exporting from all lines of data included with that Surface. Is TPU re-calculated after SBET application? The TPU is currently only recalculated if you 're-raytrace' the data. So, if you import SBET data for position or height, Qimera will 're-navigate' your data (which is much faster than re-raytracing), but you don't get updated TPU. 10

11 To update TPU: import SBET, say 'no' when Qimera prompts you to re-navigate data. update TPU parameters for the SBET system in the vessel configuration file. You will want to change the values to reflect what it actually is. Once you save the new vessel configuration, all the multibeam data files that are associated with the vessel file will be marked as requiring full re-raytrace. (If you have the SMRMSG file and the SBET file with the same names in the same folder the SBET will take the TPU values from the SMRMSG file) click the auto-process button to re-raytrace the data. While cleaning data, if you open an area but didn t change any soundings, how does one know which areas have already been worked on? Currently this can only be tracked while editing data in the Slice Editor. Areas that can have been viewed have a light grey overlay in the Surface Edit Overview dock. Areas that have been edited are overlayed with a light red colour. These overlays can be turned on or off by toggling the 'Show Visited / Edited' checkbox in the Surface Edit Overview menu. They can also be cleared by selecting 'Clear Visited/Edited' in the same menu. This overlay is unique to each dynamic surface. Suspect flagging was a way of testing CUBE before rejecting everything, what is the workaround for that? We have suspect, plotted and feature, but each user decides how to use them (PFM) It affects the soundings of the QPD, the dynamic surface gets updated for all layers. It has to be based on the CUBE. Create survey area: Will the spline filter work on the Dynamic Surface or on the files? The filter works on the QPD files but the results are updated in the Dynamic Surface. The Spline filter can either be applied to the files that make up the Dynamic Surface or by selecting files manually and running it on those files. When you have a large survey and want to apply a spline filter is is possible to constrain the filter to a smaller area or to only apply it to specific files? It is only possible to apply it to the full dynamic surface and specific files but not to specific areas at the moment. When working on a Dynamic surface does it matter which layer you have selected, if you have the average are you then editing the average layer? It doesn't matter which layer you have selected you are editing the soundings, not the layers (GRID file). The dynamic surface is broken down from the GRID file and the QPD s. The QPD s will keep the changes, and the GRID will get updated, editing is based on the points and the grid gets updated on it. The display is what you have selected: you should edit and see in the shallow surface; if you have CUBE you will be editing the CUBE surface. Where does Qimera display/show the Source datum extracted from the Raw Data? If you select a raw file and then go to the properties tab you will see the Coordinate System. Whatever is shown in the properties tab for the raw file is what is being used as the basis for the transformation and projection to the project coordinate system. There some soundings from the noise at the sonar head, I don't want to see them. Can Qimera filter these soundings directly when I input the data? 11

12 You can use the processing settings to change the filters and you could set by either depth or range from the sonar. In Qloud the ISO-44 standard (95% Posteriori Confidence Interval) is used for the Spline filter, is this the same in Qimera? Yes this is exactly the same When I apply Patch Test results, the angular offsets are not entered the same for the Tx and Rx transducers in the Vessel Editor, why? Qimera separates the two transducers in its vessel offsets. The Patch Test Tool will apply the offset corrections to the transducer at which they will have an effect. Roll to Rx, Pitch and Heading to Tx. The values from the Patch Test can also be applied to the motion sensor data instead of the mounting offsets of the transducers. 12