Surfer Contour Map
Surfer contour maps give you full control over all map parameters. You can accept the Surfer intelligent defaults to automatically create a contour map, or double-click a map to easily customize map features.
3D Surface Maps
The 3D surface map uses shading and color to emphasize your data features. Change the lighting, display angle and tilt with a click of the mouse. Overlay several surface maps to generate informative block diagrams.
Image Maps
Image maps use different colors to represent Z values of a grid file. Surfer automatically blends colors between Z values so you end up with a smooth color gradation over the entire map.
Post Maps
Post maps show points at XY locations, such as sample locations, well locations, or original data point locations. Use the points to show the distribution of data points on the map, and to demonstrate the accuracy of the gridding methods you use.
Base Maps
Surfer can import maps in many different formats to display geographic information. Base maps are created from any number of file formats, such as SHP, DXF, GeoTIFF, and PDF.
Shaded Relief Maps
Shaded relief maps are raster images based on grid files. Colors are assigned based on slope orientation relative to a light source. Surfer determines the orientation of each grid cell and calculates reflectance of a point light source on the grid surface.
3D Wireframe Maps
Surfer wireframe maps provide an impressive three dimensional display of your data. Wireframes are created by connecting Z values along lines of constant X and Y.
Vector Maps
Instantly create vector maps in Surfer to show direction and magnitude of data at points on a map. You can create vector maps from information in one grid or two separate grids. The two components of the vector map, direction and magnitude, are automatically generated from a single grid by computing the gradient of the represented surface.
Watershed Maps
Watershed maps automatically calculate and display drainage basins and streams from your grid file.
Viewshed Maps
Perform viewshed analysis using a loaded grid file with a user-specified transmitter location, height, starting angle and radius. All visible areas from the transmitter location within the selected radius are filled with a user-specified color.
Profiles
Surfer's automatic profile tool makes it easy to visualize the change in Z value from one point to another.
Graticule and Grid Lines
add graticule lines or another grid to your map to view the location in multiple sets of coordinate units! Display latitude and longitude graticule lines over a projected map, or create a map in meters and add a grid in feet.
Geoprocessing Tools
Many geoprocessing tools are available for you to edit your vector features the way you need. Some uses for geoprocessing tools include reshaping features to a new shape, creating buffer polygons or setbacks, simplifying or smoothing features, and calculating intersections between overlapping polygons.
Coordinate Systems
Choose from an endless list of coordinate systems for your map to display. Specify the source coordinate system for each of the layers in your map, and choose to display the map in any other coordinate system! For example, load data and grid files in UTM or State Plane coordinates, and display the map in Latitude/Longitude coordinates! It is simply that easy!
Map Layers
Adding multiple map layers to your map gives you a way to combine different types of data in one map. For example, you can drape a georeferenced image over a 3D surface map, overlay multiple base maps with a contour map, or plot a post map with contours over a wireframe map.
Stacking Maps
You can align individual maps horizontally on the page by stacking them. Map stacking was designed to align maps using commensurate coordinate systems. This command is useful for keeping two or more maps separated vertically on the page while keeping relative horizontal positions.
Customize Your Map
Make your map look its best by customizing it to fit your needs! Surfer offers numerous map features to enhance the look of your map. Use Surfer’s defaults, or customize your map by including scale bars, editing colors, lines and fill styles, showing only portions of a map, adjusting the scale and setting axis properties!
Superior Gridding
The gridding methods in Surfer allow you to produce accurate contour, surface, wireframe, vector, image, watershed, viewshed and shaded relief maps from your XYZ data. The data can be randomly dispersed over the map area, and Surfer's gridding will interpolate your data onto a grid. Use Surfer’s default settings or choose from twelve different gridding methods.
Variograms
Use the variogram modeling subsystem to quantitatively assess the spatial continuity of data. Variograms may be used to select an appropriate variogram model when gridding with the Kriging algorithm. Surfer uses a variogram grid as a fundamental internal data representation and once this grid is built, any experimental variogram can be computed instantaneously.
Faults and Breaklines
Define faults and breaklines when gridding your data. Faults act as barriers to the information flow, and data on one side of the fault will not be directly used to calculate grid node values on the other side of the fault. Breaklines include Z values.
Grid Node Editor
Clean up your grid with the grid node editor!
Grid Functions
In addition to creating maps, you can perform a variety of functions using grid files. Just a few of the possibilities include:
Using USGS and SRTM Data
Use USGS Digital Elevation Model (DEM), National Elevation Dataset (NED) and NASA Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) data with any Surfer command that uses grid files.
Worksheet
Surfer lets you massage your data in many ways to achieve the exact output you want. Surfer includes a full-featured worksheet for creating, opening, editing, and saving data files. Data files can be up to one billion rows and columns, subject to available memory. You can cut, copy, and paste data within the Surfer worksheet or between applications.
Object and Property Manager
The object manager and property manager makes the editing of any object simple. The object manager displays all the objects in the plot document in an easy-to-use hierarchical tree arrangement.
Automation
Create your own scripts to automate repetitive tasks! Don’t spend time doing the same process over and over again – write a simple script to simplify your life! Operations performed interactively can be controlled using an automation-compatible programming language such as Visual Basic, C++, python or perl.
Additional Features
Your Surfer package comes with many additional features to help you work smarter, not harder!
Supported File Formats
Surfer supports many data, grid, and import/export formats.