ferrellsl / quikgrid

Contour mapping and 3D surface modeling app

QuikGrid v5.4.4 for 64-bit editions of MS Windows

Contour mapping and 3D surface modeling app

A 64-Bit Windows installer for QuikGrid can be found in the release section of this repo.

This repo is for QuikGrid, the Windows-based application originally developed by John Coulthard at https://www.galiander.ca/quikgrid/

This is the full Windows application including the HelpFile in CHM format, not the command-line grid generation app, although it incorporates some of the command-line grid generation code within the Windows app itself. The gridding alogrithm, also referred to by some coders as QuikGrid, can be found in various other repos for command-line use and for use within python scripts. The app in this repo is the complete Windows application for contouring, gridding, and 3D mapping. It supports several output formats such as AutoCAD DXF, Surfer grid files, XYZ triplets, ER Mapper files, and VRML. Input formats include ASCII XYZ files, NOAA LAT/LON files, Submetrix SXP files, and DCA files.

QuikGrid started out in life as a 32-bit Windows MFC application developed under the Borland C/C++ compiler. It was my goal to import the code into a modern version of Visual Studio and generate a 64-bit binary and to create a new CHM based help file for QuikGrid as the old HLP format was no longer supported under modern versions of MS Windows.

I was shocked by how easily the Borland code imported into Visual Studio. Even the resource files generated for Borland C imported properly into Visual Studio without any issues. I initially used Visual Studio 2013 and generated a working 32-bit EXE as a proof-of-concept project. My next goal was to port all the 32-bit code to 64-bit code in order to process data files that exceeded 4GB in size. The 32-bit EXE will process approximately 128 million points, but I had data sets that easily exceeded 500 million points pulled from LIDAR files. I have successfully loaded a point cloud of 796,007,674 points (32GB ASCII XYZ file) and there's no reason why it can't load clouds composed of billions of points.

Porting to 64-bit was mostly straightforward. I had to modify all the windowing, help and mouse functions to work properly on a 64-bit version of Windows. Once that was accomplished I next needed to modify arrays and loops so that they could exceed 32-bit limits. This was probably the most tedious portion of my porting efforts as far as the C/C++ code goes.

In regard to the obsolete HLP file, I looked for a tool or tools that would simply translate or convert the old HLP file into a CHM file, but I wasn't successful in finding anything that would work and Microsoft's HTML Workshop would continually crash every time I attempted to read the HLP file. So eventually I found an app that would de-compile the HLP file into its respective components (http://download.jgsoft.com/helpscribble/helpdc21.zip). I was then able to import these components into an application called HelpScribble (https://www.helpscribble.com/). HelpScribble took the de-compiled HLP file components and generated a working CHM file. Everyting imported just fine into HelpScribble except for the Index/TOC Links which I had to go through individually and manually rebuild. That was rather tedious and took the better part of 12 hours.

I have since found an application called HelpNDoc (https://www.helpndoc.com/) that's free for personal use that will import HLP files and generate CHM help files with zero effort. The CHM file created by HelpNDoc is included in the v5.4 release.

This release also supports multi-user preferences. A QUIKGRID.INI file will be generated for every user with a valid username and it is stored under: c:\users\your-username\QUIKGRID.INI

Usernames with spaces will probably not work properly and remains untested.

The code has now been moved over to Visual Studio 2019 and I decided it was time to put this release on github as John and I are not young men anymore. We're both retired but I won't divulge our ages! LOL!

Users who wish to create VRML models should note that the latest version of QuikGrid generates VRML version 1.0 and 2.0 files thanks to the work of Volker Enderlein of Coin3D. The default is 1.0 output. To switch to 2.0 file output, go to the Edit menu and select Output Options and place a checkmark in the box for VRML2 output. There is also a VRML Viewer app in the VRML Viewer folder. The viewer is based on the Coin3D library version 4 and is 64-bit, so it will load very large models. I've successfully loaded VRML2.0 files that were in excess of 500MB in size. See the Usage.txt for more info. You can drag and drop a VRML2.0 file onto the executable to load/view it, or use the command line. It also has a GUI. The sourcecode for the viewer can be found at: https://github.com/glls/gl3dv A sample VRML file of Wizard Island is located in the Sample Data folder. Windows 11 also includes a 3D Builder app which will render VRML2.0 files but sometimes fails to render extremely large files. Volker also optimized the VRML output which has significantly reduced the size of VRML files generated by QuikGrid.

BUILDING:

If you're using Visual Studio 2019 or later, double-click the Visual Studio Solution file in the QuikGrid sub-folder and build the EXE. This app is a Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) application so building a native Linux or MacOS version is probably out of the question without a significant re-write of the GUI code. It would be nice if some coding gurus out there removed the MFC dependencies and replaced them with something cross-platform such as QT, wxWidgets or even GTK. I currently have no plans to do so though. I'm happy running this on Windows.

LINUX/MacOS USAGE:

I have confirmed that this build of QuikGrid runs under Ubuntu 22.10 via Wine64 so it should also in theory run just as well under MacOS using Wine64. To obtain help file support under Wine64, you will need to install Gecko. Download the appropriate version of Gecko from here: https://wiki.winehq.org/Gecko

Next, open a terminal in the location where you downloaded Gecko and type: wine msiexec /i wine-gecko-2.xxxxx.msi

Replace the x's with your version. In my case, that was wine-gecko-2.47.2-x86_64.msi

FOR QUESTIONS or COMMENTS:

Please use the Discussions link at the top of the page for questions or comments and report any bugs using the Issues link and I'll respond as soon as I can.