A Breif Introduction to Surfer

About Surfer

Surfer is a grid-based mapping program that interpolates irregularly spaced XYZ data into a regularly spaced grid. Grids may also be imported from other sources. Surfer uses these grid files to produce different types of maps. Different methods of gridding (like Kriging, Nearest Neighbor, Minimum Curvature, Inverse distance to a power and many more ... ) and mapping options are available allowing you to produce the map that best represents your data. In addition, data metrics allow you to gather information about your gridded data in the form of report. The grid files themselves can be edited, combined, filtered, sliced, queried, and mathematically transformed.

What for Surfer can be used ?

Frankly speaking Surfer is one of the best and robust package when it comes in preparation of contour diagram. Surfer basically interpolates a Z data that may be elevation, assay value, stratum thickness, grade etc. spaced in XY plane (e.g. Easting & Northing). The following output can be generated from Surfer.

• A contour diagram for XYZ data.
• Prepare 3-D Wireframe for XYZ data.
• Can create Base Map from XY data.
• Create watershed map types that calculate and display drainage areas and watershed boundaries.
• Create profiles automatically from map layers.
• Can create 3-D Surface map.
• Can create Post map for overlay purpose.
• Shaded Relief Map can be created.
• Can create Grid Vector Map.

Conclusion

Surfer is a powerful and user friendly package for Geology. Here one can play with polyline and polygon. Polyline can be converted in polygon and vice versa. Polygons can be combined together to a single polygon. Data can be imported in Excel, GPX, ASCII, and GRIB formats. It can also import attribute information from files that contain attributes, such as TIF, GPX, or SHP. Files can be exported in Image, PDF, BLN, BNA, GSB, GSI, KML, KMZ, MIF, and SHP file formats. Symbols, texts, scale bar, direction, legend, colour scale etc. can be incorporated to enhance the map presentation.