Questions from a curious MB-System user

[ESaltPi]

Hi,
I've been reading through the new tutorial and I think its great! I work with AUV Sentry data and have my own workflow, so I am comparing a bit, and naturally i have some questions about the differences. For reference, AUV Sentry uses an EM2040 (.kmall/.mb261) and produces bathymetry data at around a 1m resolution. I edit my files in both mbeditviz first and then mbedit.

1. Is there a difference between using mbm_makedatalist -S.mb59 -P -V vs. ls *.mb59 > datalist.mb-1 ? Also, it might be nice to specify the output (-Odatalist.mb-1) in the mbm_makedatalist command on page 9.
2. Is the mbmakeplatform really necessary or is it already done when running mbpreprocess?
3. When inputting files directly into mbedit and mbeditviz, the file format can be inferred from the .mbXX suffix and is not necessary to specify viz -F.
4. Can you explain why you state this on page 16:

Important: in “mbedit”, “mbeditviz”, and other programs (with the exception of “mbfilter”), work on the preprocessed versions of files (e.g., import the datalist.mb-1), and choose to apply existing saved edits to the data. Editing the “p.mb59” files (or importing datalistp.mb-1), has the undesirable result of creating cascades of “pp.mb59” files.

I have always thought that you should edit the most recent processed files, not one step back.
5. I would show the default 3D soundings view for figure 11 with black (and red, blue, and green) soundings.
6. Ive found that when mbeditviz crashes, the lost edits go back to the last save, but when mbedit crashes, the entire editing process restarts and any flagged soundings are lost.
7. page 22: "The program “mbnavadjust” will be introduced in the Chapter about working with data from AUVs." maybe specify which chapter.
8. page 42: you say bellow instead of below. oops!
9. Can you add something on updating mbsystem? something about a sudo make uninstall in the correct directory before installing the new version.

[cdsferreira]

Hi there, sorry I didn't see you post as I was busy with other stuff. I will work on providing some answers later. It's a long list :-)

[cdsferreira]

Hi again,

I'm sorry, but I was very busy with many other things (a few very important/urgent and and long lasting). But finally, here are some answers:

1. No, they are not the same. The mbmakedalist adds a second column with the format ID. Although this is not mandatory since MB-System can figure out the format based on file extension, it's always safer to have it;

2. It's not mandatory for Kongsberg data. From the official man page documentation: "Platform files are needed for preprocessing only when survey data have been collected without integrating the asynchronous navigation and attitude data and when the positional and angular offsets between the survey sensor (e.g. multibeam sonar, lidar, stereo camera rig) have not been specified in the various data streams.”

3. Yes, the datalist with that second column will give the format ID. The value for -F in this case would be "-1", which is not required either if the datalist name follows the ".mb-1" convention.

4. If you open processed files (*p.mbXX) and edit them, the edits (and parameter file generated) will be connected to processed files, and the only way to apply and merge those changes will be by processing those and creating “processed, processed, or double processed" files (*pp.mbXX). Meanwhile, the editing tools will merge the edits (from .esf) on the fly. When you open preprocessed files with .esf files connected to them, the tool will merge those. With that, you will see basically a preview of how the processed files will look.

5. I personally agree with you, but I had to choose one of the possible display methods when writing the tutorial. I can add both versions in a future version of the tutorial. The only issue is that my sample dataset has no soundings flagged by the sonar (to better illustrate that capability).

6. I think you are correct. I will investigate this more deeply on both Linux and Mac to see what can be done to mitigate this issue.

7 and 8) Thanks, and that is changed/corrected now. I will create a new PDF later this week and put out a new release. That also finally solved the copy/paste issue reported by other users.

9. I can add an extra section in both installation appendixes on how to upgrade the MB-System installation. In a nutshell, that is, remove the installation folder to something else, and unzip/untar the source code you got from GitHub at the "sandbox" folder. Rename the folder as "mbsystem", since your system is already set to look for it, and do the MB-System installation again (cmake, make & make install), and it's done.

Any more questions? Or extra clarifications needed?

Christian