RockWorks | Utilities | Planes | Beta Intersections
This program reads a listing of planar orientations from the RockWorks datasheet and calculates the lineations resulting from the intersections of all of the planes in the file. The linear values will be stored in an ASCII text file that can be displayed in the RockWorks text editor when completed.
The number of intersections that will be computed is:
number = n ( n - 1 ) / 2 where n is the number of individual planes in the input file.
As the number of original planes increases, the number of resulting lineations increases dramatically. For example, a data set with 20 planes will result in 190 lineations, and 200 planes will produce 19,900 lineations!
How does this differ from the Beta Pairs tool? Beta Intersections reads a listing of individual planar bearing and dip measurements from the data sheet and calculates the lineations that result from the intersection of each plane with each other plane in the data set. This can result in a tremendous number of computed lineations! Beta Pairs, on the other hand, reads strike and dip measurements for pairs of planes, and for each pair computes the single resulting lineation.
Menu Options
Step-by-Step Summary
- Data Columns: These prompts tell RockWorks which columns in the current datasheet contain the input data.
Click on an existing name to select a different name from the drop-down list.
- Direction: Select the name of the column that contains the bearing measurements (either strike bearing or dip direction, which you'll specify below).
- Dip: Select the name of the column that contains the dip angle measurements. Note: For planar data, horizontal is considered to be zero, and dipping straight down is entered as 90. Negative dip angles are not supported.
- Input Format: Choose how the planar data are recorded in the datasheet.
- Declination
- Magnetic Declination Correction: Enter any declinaton correction as described in the program dialog.
- Azimuths (Direction) Represent...
- Inclination (Dip) Direction: Choose this option if the Direction measurements, defined in the column above, represent planar dip direction.
- Strike Direction: Choose this option if the Direction measurements represent strike azimuth bearing. This assumes a right-hand rule whereby the dip direction is 90 degrees clockwise from the strike bearing.
- Output Options
Click this tab to define the output format(s) for the report. (More info)
- RwDat (RockWorks): Click in this button if you want the report generated in a RockWorks datasheet (.RwDat) format.
- CSV (Excel): Click in this button if you want the report generated in a CSV file format for use in Excel.
- TXT (Notepad): Click in this button if you want the report generated in a text (.txt) format.
- RTF (Word): Click in this button if you want the report generated in an RTF file format for use in Word.
- Access the RockWorks Datasheet program tab.
- Create a new datasheet and enter/import your strike and dip data (or dip direction, dip angle data) into the datasheet.
Or, open one of the sample files and replace that data with your own. See Data Layout for datasheet examples.
! Click the Example button at the top of the window to load a sample file that is installed with the program.
- Choose the Utilities | Planes | Beta Intersections menu option.
- Enter the requested program settings, above.
- Click the Continue button to proceed.
The program will read the planar orientation data from the data sheet and write each intersection lineation into the specified output format(s).
Back to Planes Menu Summary
RockWare home page