New Sub Bottom Reflector Digitizing Tools

Chesapeake Times, Vol 3 | October 2020

We have some new features in SonarWiz 7.7 that will assist in digitizing reflectors. The first tool is the Smart Reflector Tracking tool. It assists the user in tracing part or all of a reflector. It turns a job that used to entail many clicks into 2 clicks. Just enable the Smart Reflector Tracking tool at any time when in the Sub Bottom Digitizer Acoustic Reflector Tools by clicking the Auto-Fill button.

Then the user simply sets a starting “anchor” point and an ending point. The tool then traces the reflector automatically between the 2 points. The user then can continue tracing by setting another ending point or by starting a new reflector.


Set the anchor point, scroll to the end, set the end point

The start anchor point does not need to be visible in order to do assisted tracing. The user can set an anchor point at the start of a file, scroll to the end and set the end point. The auto-fill will trace the entire reflector between the start and end points.


Zoom out to see the whole automatically traced reflector

The Smart Reflector Tracker can also assist in cleaning up manually digitized reflectors. The user can enable it whenever they would like during creating a new reflector or editing an existing digitized reflector. In the event that the Smart Reflector Tracker has a difficult time the digitized points can be manually edited.

The next tool we are introducing in SonarWiz 7.7 is the multiple reflector identification. This tool assists the user in visually identifying reflectors and their harmonics. After the user enables this tool they just move the mouse cursor to the reflector in question and then compare the harmonic markers with the actual data. This is done interactively. If a harmonic is identified then it can be marked temporarily by clicking.


Multiple reflector identification tool in action

We will be extending this capability in the future to further assist the user in digitizing reflectors.

-Christopher Favreau, Chief Technology Officer