Best Of
🚀 What's new in Visible Geology - May 2025
We are excited to announce that several enhancements have been made to Visible Geology to make your modelling even smoother!
Try them for yourself at www.visiblegeology.com, and let us know what you think in the comments below 👇️
- You can now bring more colour to your geological models by using the colour picker for dikes, plutons, and faults;
- When creating cores, you can now enter trend and plunge values in a data field and name your creation instead of using a default name;
- We've added directions on the grid so you can better locate yourself when using Visible Geology;
- Across Visible Geology, we've made efforts to match worldwide notation standards, displaying strike, rake, and trend with three digits;
- Lastly, in the Stereonet tool, you can now cancel your action upon creating a stereonet projection, avoiding the need to save and then delete it.
Plus, we've addressed some pesky issues you may have encountered:
- Contour lines have been enhanced for better visibility on topography and we've removed the straight lines that were incorrectly linking topography lines;
- Sections rendering will now appear correctly on complex geological models, regardless of their azimuth.
As always, we appreciate the support and feedback from the Visible Geology community!
Re: Is it possible to model capillary fringe with Seep/W?
Yes, the SEEP/W formulation allows for comprehensive understanding of both saturated and unsaturated pore water pressure conditions. The saturated/unsaturated material model defines material properties (volumetric water content and hydraulic conductivity) over both positive and negative pore water pressures. Thus, when a SEEP/W analysis is solved, the pore water pressures (negative and positive) and the corresponding material properties are known throughout the domain. This includes the volumetric water content and saturation so the depth of the capillary fringe can be determined.
SEEP/W also includes a potential seepage face boundary condition that when applied, computes which nodes have seepage and which don't.
Re: Creating GM with both surficial lithologic map and borehole lithology
Hi Jackson,
The things I would look like trying here are:
- As you've probably seen in the 'Model From A Map' you can create the surface from the drilling then 'Add —> GIS Data' to the surface as an additional data, you've likely tried this, but I just wanted to confirm that's the route you've gone down.
- Utilising GIS lines rather than polylines, if you have a topo surface GIS lines can be drawn without worrying too much about elevation, then draped onto the topography surface. Polylines can travel above and below the topo easily and often you find if the polyline is slightly above the topo, it's technically outside the model boundary and won't be honoured.
- As an extension of the previous point you could look into turning off the 'Boundary Filter', the default will only let the surfaces see within the boundary box, this does let the GM run more efficiently by not looking for everything, but this might be limiting those polylines being 'seen'
- Also have a look into the snapping rules for the GM, if the snapping is honouring the drilling only this could explain why it's not matching your lines, you can change the snapping to 'All Data' or 'Custom' and tick the surface lines.
If none of these seem to do the job please shoot us an email at support@seequent.com, for us to have a more in depth look with you.
Cheers,
Lee
LeeEvans
Re: Direction of seismic loads and the need for seepage analysis prior to stability analysis
Hello, the pseudo-static method applies an additional force based on the weight of the slice and the pseudo-static seismic coefficient (as shown below). The seismic coefficient is dimensionless and thus is always positive.
For more information on the pseudo-static method, please see the SLOPE/W course that is available in the Seequent Learning Centre or the Slope Stability Modelling Manual:
The need for a seepage analysis depends on how complex the pore water pressures are at your site. If the dam has many layers including filters, core, etc. a seepage analysis is likely necessary to capture the full pore water pressure conditions.
Re: who have the training Drilling data used for EDGE?
Hi @IanZhou I found this resource for Edge - is this useful? https://help.seequent.com/Geo/2024.1/en-GB/Content/estimation/estimation.htm
Re: Multidialog menu
Hi. Not through the use of Python API. I took a bit more complex path with GX language and C++.
Re: Groundwater analytical data over time best practice
hi @BenjaminLockwood great question!
You found a limitation when importing time series data within the Borehole Import. I'd suggest continuing your workaround of importing individual sampling events into the Borehole folder to eliminate the duplicate "Errors".
If using Leapfrog Works - You can get around these errors by turning on the Contaminants Extension and importing your table into the Points Folder as "Time Dependent Points". This will allow you to import these time series data without Leapfrog calling out an Error. You would then create query filters to isolate specific sampling events.
I've attached an example file of how you would set up your table for a Time Dependent Import.
*There are some limitations using this method- for example not being able to create Merged Tables like you can for interval data..
You can read up on adding Time Dependent Points to your Model here: Help Guide-Time Dependent Points
Cheers,
Sean Buchanan
Re: Variable Orientation - Interpolation or NN?
I think you’ll find that if you flip the facing direction of the left hand mesh, you will get the result you are looking for.
The VO is calculated by decomposing the normal vector to the surface into 3 component vectors and interpolating those. The facing direction is important to determine the sense of the normal vector.
Kind regards
Mike