Manual dips

Quick Start Tutorial

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Quick Start Tutorial

Dips is a program designed for the interactive analysis of orientation based geological data. This quick start tutorial will familiarize the user with some of the basic features of Dips. If you have not already done so, run Dips by double-clicking on the Dips icon in your installation folder. Or from the Start menu, select Programs →Rocscience → Dips → Dips. If the Dips application window is not already maximized, maximize it now, so that the full screen is available for viewing the data.

Example.dip File
In your Dips installation folder you will find an Examples folder, containing several example Dips files. This Quick Start tutorial will use the Example.dip file in the Examples folder. To open the Example.dip file:

Select:File → Open
Navigate to the Examples folder in your Dips installation folder, and open the Example.dip file.

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Tutorial Manual

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You should see the spreadsheet view shown in Figure 1. A Dips file is always opened by displaying a spreadsheet view of the data. The Dips spreadsheet is also called the Grid View throughout this manual. Maximize the GridView.

Figure 1: Grid View of Example.dip file.
We won’t worry about the details of this file yet, except to note that it contains 40 rows, and the following columns: • • • • Two Orientation Columns A Quantity Column A Traverse Column Three Extra Columns

In the next tutorial, we will discuss how to create the EXAMPLE.DIP file from scratch.

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Pole Plot
Creating a Pole Plot is just one mouse click away. Select the Pole Plot option from the toolbar or the View menu.

Select: View → Pole Plot
A new view displaying a Pole Plot will be generated, as shown below.

Figure 2: Pole Plot of EXAMPLE.DIP data.
Each pole on a Pole Plot represents an orientation data pair in the first two columns of a Dips file. The Pole Plotcan also display feature attribute information, based on the data in any column of a Dips file, with the Symbolic Pole Plot option. This is covered later in this tutorial.

Convention
As you move the cursor around the stereonet, notice that the cursor orientation coordinates are displayed in the Status Bar. The format of these orientation coordinates can be toggled with the Convention option inthe Setup menu.

Dips v.5.0

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If the Convention is Pole Vector, the coordinates will be in Trend / Plunge format, and represent the cursor (pole) location directly. This is the default setting. If the Convention is Plane Vector, the coordinates will correspond to the Global Orientation Format of the current document (e.g. Dip/DipDirection, Strike/DipRight , Strike/DipLeft), and represent the PLANE corresponding to the cursor (pole) location.

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TIP: the quickest and most convenient way of toggling the Convention is to click on the box in the Status Bar to the left of the coordinate display, with the LEFT mouse button. The Convention also affects the format of certain data listings in Dips (e.g. the Major Planes legend, theEdit Planes and Edit Sets dialogs), and the format of orientation data input for certain options (e.g. Add Plane and Add Set Window dialogs). NOTE: THE CONVENTION OPTION DOES NOT AFFECT THE PLOTTING OF DATA, OR THE VALUES IN THE GRID IN ANY WAY !! Poles are ALWAYS plotted using the Trend and Plunge of the pole vector with respect to the reference sphere, regardless of the setting of the Conventionoption.

Legend
Note that the Legend for the Pole Plot (and all stereonet plots in Dips) indicates the: • • Projection Type (Equal Angle) and Hemisphere (Lower Hemisphere).

These can be changed using Stereonet Options in the Setup menu (Equal Area and Upper Hemisphere options can be used). However, for this tutorial, we will use the default projection options. Note that the Legend also...