GGU-DRAWDOWN: "Normal contours" menu item

The program carries out a triangulation with all calculated drawdowns and creates from this an interpolation grid, which then forms the basis for the contour presentation. If you have not yet calculated any individual drawdown, you can do this using, e.g. the menu item "Evaluation/In an array".

First, specify the type of drawdown for contour visualisation:

The triangulation then follows, which may take several seconds for a large number of points, and/or with a slow PC. The following dialog box appears:

The program shows the existing smallest and largest values and the separation of the contour lines. If you want the representation to begin with a different value, the initial value can be entered here. You can also vary the spacing, in order to reduce the number of contour lines drawn for example. The settings displayed here are always those automatically selected by the program. Using the "Old values" button, the preferences used for the previous contour line diagram are adopted.

The program supports three smoothing out procedures:

• "Do not smooth"
  As a linear method is implemented within the triangle elements, this will provide analysis results without smoothing performed by the program.

• "Method 1" and "Method 2"
  these smoothing out procedures employ two different Bezier splines. Smoothing out intensities can be given for both in order to acquire smooth contour lines. Method 2 creates very "round" contours, with the danger that the true results may be falsified.

You can specify the type of visualisation for the contour lines by means of the "Further preferences" button, e.g. system boundaries, triangle mesh, contour labelling, font size, etc.

If your preferences are confirmed by pressing "OK" the contours are displayed on the screen. The colour and pen width defined in "Graphics preferences/Pen colour and width" is used. If you need to display the contours in a different colour or pen width they can be edited using this menu item.