Chesapeake Times, Vol 2 | July 2020
Among the changes scheduled for the upcoming 7.7 release of SonarWiz are a number of improvements in the SBP modules. Several exciting features are in the development and testing pipelines to aid in the importing, processing and interpreting workflows – things like automated import from a monitored folder, assisted reflector tracking, multiple detection, and improvements to alignment to bathymetric surfaces.
In this article, though, I’d like to talk about a couple of simpler improvements in the SBP modules, particularly in the processing window. These improvements have been in the works, and conditionally available or some time now, but haven’t been defaults or as easily accessible or easily used as they could be.
The first improvement is in the enabled range. An oft-repeated support request has been to allow for better control of visible across-track range water column or repeating multiples that just serve to detract from the important data. Getting just the data of interest into and held in view, though, could be tricky, so we’re implementing some controls easily available through the window that will allow for clipping the near and far range in an intuitive, flexible manner, without image rebuilding.
A function similar to this has been available for some time in limited form in the batch image export process through the “Regions” button on that window. That button will bring up a dialog at export time to allow for choosing a region of data to export, with some choices available for controlling along- and across-track range display. That concept, applied with some interactive control, allows for finding and focusing on the right subset of the data quickly and easily.
In addition to control over displayed range, relative scaling in the along- and across-track dimensions can be a bit tricky to get right, with the current setting in the SBP portion of the advanced settings menu, and requiring an image rebuild to be made active. This too will be more easily controllable in 7.7, available interactively and not requiring a costly image rebuild.
Overall, these are pretty simple changes compared to the more advanced stuff mentioned at the beginning. That said, they’re nice quality of life improvements, pair nicely with recent improvements in time and sound velocity handling in SonarWiz, and enable some even more substantial improvements in the future with the performance and interactivity of the SBP interpretation window.
-Jonathan Fleetwood, Senior Developer