Issue 64

Using the New Contour Level Method in Surfer 10

It is easier than ever to format contour map levels with Surfer’s new customization abilities. Surfer 10 offers two different ways to edit contour levels: Simple (the default) and Advanced.

• The Simple level method allows you to quickly and easily define and edit basic contour attributes, such as major and minor contour line intervals, major and minor contour line properties and color fill. You can make your changes and see the changes immediately on the map.
• The Advanced level method gives you full control over contour level properties and allows you to make edits all the way down to the smallest details of your map. You can set a fill pattern, foreground/background colors, add custom labels or hachures, or load a levels file (*.LVL). You will need to enter the advanced Properties dialog, make your changes and click OK to see the changes on the map.

This example will go over setting contour map properties using both methods, starting with the Simple method.

1. Open Surfer 10 and go to Map | New | Contour Map.
2. Navigate to the Surfer Samples folder in the Surfer installation directory (C:\Program Files\Golden Software\Surfer 10\Samples), select Conifer.grd and click Open. The contour map is created with the default attributes.
3. Select the Contours layer in the Object Manager.
4. In the Property Manager, on the General tab, check the Fill contours check box.
5. Go to the Levels tab.
6. The default Level method is Simple. This makes it very easy to set major and minor contour line properties.
   1. Change the Contour Interval to 40 and press Enter on the keyboard.
   2. Click on the button to the right of Fill colors and click the Custom button at the bottom of the drop down list.
   3. In the Colormap dialog, select the BrownGreen preset (near the bottom of the list), change the Opacity slider to 50% and click OK.
   4. Under the Major Contours section, open the Line Properties section and set the Color to Dark Brown and theWidth to 0.300
   5. Under the Minor Contours section, open the Line Properties section and set the Color to 70% Black.


Select Simple as the Level method and easily set major and minor contour line properties and color fill.

7. Now click to the right of Level method and change it to Advanced.
8. To the right of Contour levels, click the Edit Levels button. This will open the Properties dialog. By default, it has all the properties that were assigned when the Level method was set to Simple. You can make additional changes to any of the properties, or load or save a levels file (*.LVL). We will make a few additional changes.
   1. We can change individual line properties. Double click on the line for the 2300 level. In the Line Propertiesdialog, change the Color to Blue and click OK.
   2. We can change label properties, such as font properties. Click on the Label button. In the Labels dialog, change the Curve Tolerance to 3. Then click the Font button and set the Size (points) to 12, change theForeground color to Dark Brown, and check the Bold check box. Click OK and OK.
   3. We can add hachures to the contour levels. You can either double click a No to turn it to a Yes to hachure an individual level, or you can hachure groups of levels. To do this, click the Hach button. Change the Set to 1 and the Skip to 4 to hachure every 5th contour level (all the major contour lines). Uncheck Hachure Closed Contours Only and click OK.
   4. To save these settings to use with future maps, click the Save button. Give the file a name and click Save to save the settings to a Level file (*.LVL).
   5. Click OK in the Properties dialog to apply the changes to the map.

Click the EditLevels button in the Property Manager to access the advanced level properties.
Click OK in the Properties dialog to apply the changes to the map.