Hi Jochen,

I was wondering if adding a graphical selection for filtering would be something doable. Something like the "polygonal lasso tool" of photoshop or the free from selection tool in Paint.
I'm asking because I'm working on a carry survey project for the last year and I now have too many intricated topographical sessions and/or too many levels to be able to filter a specific area of interest I would like to display.

not too sure of the spherical selection as it would be impossible to display exactly what you want to display. Polygonal or free-form selection would definitely be perfect or rectangle with the possibility to add several rectangle (i.e. using shift key + mouse graphical selection) but it is probably easier said than done.

Let's give it a try with your station/radius suggestion as it might works well.
A few things though to make this tool efficent in my opinion:
- preferably, the selection tool should be graphical, i.e. after selecting the station, the selection radius should be something visible/graphical on the view: moving the mouse and clicking to the appropriate distance, instead of typing a radius value.
- multiple selections made possible to allow the selection of an aera that doesn't have a circular shape and that is intricated is the middle of other areas that you don't want on the filtered display.

Hi Jochen,

Did you had a chance to look deeper into this?

Hi Jochen,

Sorry for being so long to reply April and May have been very busy.

The primary goal of such a graphical tool is to :
- easily assign "Levels" as with loads of splays, stations and levels are not consistent and assigning level to splays becomes an harassing one by one task
- draw a specfic area where overlaying and/or underlaying data distrubs the understanding of the area
- display a reduced but consitent area as it does not always match the available filters

In my opinion, in order to achieve such goals:
- selection should be polygonal because mother nature rarely fits in squares or rectangles
- selection should be doable from the "Perspective" mode because we are dealing with 3D objects and offers more vantage points than plan or side views
- multi-selection should be doable as it is not always possible to select part of a survey in one go
- selection options should be:
--> + inside and - outside the polygon (basic feature for selection)
--> + inside the polygon (add to selection)
--> - inside the polygon (remove from selection)
- multi-selection should doable from different angles as you may have overlaying and/or underlaying parts of the cave in the way and needs to be removed from the selection from one (or more) different angle.

Here is an example where I want to select a specific area in a carry and only the upper level.



I hope this help

Enjoy! :)

Hi Jochen,

Thanks a lot for developing this nice feature, I managed to select various areas on natural cave survey as well as on carry survey and the result is great. However, I think there are some improvements and changes to do to make it more efficient and easy to use.

RMB = right mouse button
CMB = centre mouse button
LMB = left mouse button

At the moment, when Select/Deselect features are enabled, the behaviour of the Perspective view is changed (3D rotation not available when selecting) and most RMB options are disabled even after the selection is done... and I don't like this. I think this could be done differently. Instead of buttons (i.e. select and deselect) we could have a key-mouse combo, and this could make the feature more practical and flowing.
I think Alt+LMB and Shift+LMB are "free" combos.
We could have :
Alt+LMB = add to selection
Shift+LMB = remove from selection

this way, you don't have to disable the 3D rotation while selecting/deselecting, which is needed to select data a various angles.

Polygon or lasso could be one "swap between the 2 types" button.

I find also cumbersome the fact that to select something in particular, you have to deselect everything first.
the "Select" behaviour should be
- if nothing is already selected, then whatever is in the lasso/polygon is selected and displayed, whatever is outside is not selected.
- if some data are already selected, then whatever is in the lasso/polygon is added to the selection.
"Deselect" seems OK.

Also, selection would be way better if it could be done once individual splays instead of stations i.e. all splays of each selected stations. splays often describes the cave far beyond its ref station and might be useful to describe part of the cave " far" away for its ref station. In other cases, some splays are not desired to understand or draw part of the cave. So selecting individual splays would be a lot better.

Selection should be doable on filtered data e.g. Select part of passages 20260430,20260501.

As mentioned, the RMB options should be available on the Selected data.

Another thing that needs fixing is the zoom out jumps when Select/Deselect are disabled and you enable to do or to edit a selection... it should stay with the current view as there is more than a chance that you are already focussing on the area of interest.

One last thing... we should have a clear selection button (?) or RMB option (?)

That's a lot, of thing to adjust but the feature is already very promising!!

Again thanks a lot!