Release Notes

About This Release
New Capabilities
Enhancements and Maintenance Fixes

About this Release

The 2008 Release is available on CD only. CDs were shipping beginning in March to Geosoft customers with maintained licenses.

New Capabilities

ESRI Integration

ArcGIS MXD files are now supported natively. Integrating ESRI technology in the Geosoft environment allows MXD and LYR files to appear exactly as they appear in ArcGIS with no loss of data quality. Like Geosoft Maps, ArcGIS MXDs appear in your Project Explorer. They display in a new MXD viewer, and you can open, create, and visualize ESRI MXD and LYR files directly in a Geosoft project.

Cursor tracking and dynamic linking exists between MXDs and Geosoft Maps. MXD files may be saved as Geosoft Maps and Geosoft Maps may be saved as MXD. To make data sharing efficient, you can drag and drop layers from MXDs directly into Geosoft Map groups, or from Geosoft Map groups into MXDs. Installation of a free Geosoft Plugin for ArcGIS or Target for ArcGIS is required to view Geosoft groups within an MXD. Watch the ESRI Integration Video.

Improved Workflow

Geosoft has reorganized its menus to streamline workflows and improve your productivity. The new menus provide a logical placement of tools, with new, consistent naming and the removal of duplicate menu items.

3D Improvements

The 3D Tool has been redesigned to simplify work with your 3D data. Options are reorganized onto fewer tabs and the data sliders have been enhanced. A new Isosurface tab allows you to control isosurface transparency, colour, and clipping. The tabs are data type sensitive, and display only when appropriate data is in your 3D view.

True transparency has been added and is automatically enabled with video cards that support it.

3D Geology Surfaces

Create an elevation grid to represent the top or bottom surface of a lithology unit based on a lithology channel in a Geosoft Drillhole database. You can create a geology surface grid from any geologic attribute, such as rock type, alteration, or mineralization. You can also extract a profile of the 3D geology surface grid into a section view without digitizing.

3D Lithology Gridding

Create a 3D lithology model based on drillhole data. A geology 3D model can be created from any geologic attribute, such as rock type, alteration, or mineralization. Display only the rock unit of interest. Once the 3D model is created, each individual rock unit in the model may be toggled on or off to be viewed separately or together.

Fence Diagrams

You can now create professional fence diagrams quickly, based on selected drillholes. Fence diagrams are especially useful when comparing down hole geology from a limited number of holes. This new capability provides geologists with an additional mapping option for displaying and viewing drillhole data. There are many down hole data display options, including automatic creation of geology polygons between holes.

New Coordinate System Interface

• The coordinate system interface is redesigned to make creating, editing or viewing projections a simple, one-step process.
• The Coordinate System tool now also supports ESRI projection files (PRJ).

New Math Expression Tool

A new, easy-to-use interface allows you to build math expressions for use in channels, grids, or voxels. The new math expression tool keeps all arithmetic, trigonometric, and logical math operators readily accessible, making it easier to build expressions to work with your data. Watch the Math Expression Video.

Enhanced Image Support

Target now supports on-the-fly image re-projection, so images may be used in a single map (previously, images that used plug-ins would not re-project and you had to create a separate map to display the image). Also the speed of redrawing re-projected data groups on maps has been improved significantly.

Automatic Metadata Creation

Target now creates metadata automatically when you work with data, storing the name of the user, date, time, and actions performed. A new XML Metadata viewer and editor allows easy access to your metadata.

• The coordinate system interface is redesigned to make creating, editing or viewing projections a simple, one-step process.
• Metadata is passed on in derived products. For example, metadata information entered about a survey is maintained when you create a grid with the survey data, and filtered grids retain the parent grids' metadata.
• The coordinate system interface is redesigned to make creating, editing or viewing projections a simple, one-step process.
• The metadata is ISO 19139 standards-based, providing integration with systems that support this standard. This metadata is stored as a companion XML file.

Automated Map Sheet Enhancement

The automated multiple map sheet creation feature now includes degree map support, making the creation of government-styled multiple map sheets quick and simple.

Access More Data with Dapple

Access all of your data without leaving the Geosoft environment. Target now uses Dapple, a globe explorer, to find, view, and extract data from a variety of data servers. You can use internal servers as well as public servers including DAP servers, WMS servers, ArcIMS servers, and Tile Servers.

Along with enhanced Area-of-Interest searches using the globe, new capabilities include a WEB spatial data search engine for locating available public data, and a text search to narrow searches to topics of interest.

Use all available data for complete investigation and informed decision-making.

Enhancements and Maintenance Fixes

• Support for non-surveyed LAS files in the Strip Log view. You can now import LAS files without location information and view them as strip logs.
• Micromine file format support.
• MapInfo MIF support in the MapInfo import routine.
• Export maps as KML for display in Google Earth.
• Optimized Channel Profile display for very large data sets.
• Projection tables have been updated to EPSG version 6.12.