Case Study: Multi-Disciplinary Civil Engineering Design (Quarry)

Digital way of obtaining ground height information:

Students should be using the PANORAMA DTM files rather than the contour data. It is possible to convert .ntf files to a format which can be imported into Surfer.

The Digimap help pages give details of a translator called NTFTOXYZ. This is available free of charge from a company called Woolleysoft. The software (called NTFTOXYZ.exe) will allow you to convert files from .ntf to .xyz.

Once the conversion has been done (instructions on how to use the converter are downloaded with the application itself), simply open the .xyz file in Surfer. Remove the top two rows of information from the file and head the columns as x data, y data, z data. Next choose Data from the Grid menu (you will need to tell the dialogue box to show all files *.*). Select the .xyz file you created; this should produce an Interpolation Options box. Clicking ok to this will generate a Data Filter Report and a Grid file (.grd). The plot behind this will be blank, but using the toolbar to the right hand side will allow you to draw your grid.