ioGAS

A: Select the summary statistics window and then click on the Display Statistic Selection icon on the RHS toolbar.  It may be necessary to drag the options window to a larger size to view the percentile selections and clear/select all percentiles option.  The checked selection of statistics will be applied to any newly created statistics windows and the most recently highlighted statistics window.

A: Select the summary statistics window and then click on the top left hand corner cell to be able to copy all the summary cells.  Alternatively use the icon from the RHS (Right-Hand Side) toolbar to copy all the records to the clipboard and then paste into Word or Excel.  To make a selection of records to copy, hold down the left-mouse button and drag to highlight the rows of interest.  The Ctrl and Shift keys can be use to aid in this selection (as for any Microsoft office program).  One trick is to also highlight the variables row without selecting all cells is to use Ctrl and left-mouse click on any other of the cells in that row.

A: The order of the columns in the Summary Stats is the same as in the Data>Select Variables dialog.  Swapping axes will reset the order of variables/statistics.  To change the order of statistics, it is possible to switch the axes using the switch icon on the RHS toolbar (while the summary statistics window is active) and have the variables as rows and the statistics as columns.  However, to keep the order chosen, the cells will have to be copied in this transposed format.

A: If the statistics button is greyed out then make sure that the Data>Select Variables dialog has some data columns selected.  If no statistics are displayed after clicking on the Statistics button on the main Toolbar and select the Display Statistic Selection button on the RHS toolbar and make sure that the desired statistics are checked in here.  If problem persists delete all the *.gst files in the install directory if you’re running ioGAS version 4.4 and older, or delete all the *.gst files in the user configuration directory (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS\state) if you’re running version 4.5 to reset and re-start the program.  One of these files is a cache of the chosen stats which may have become corrupted.

A: Yes.  Open up the Summary Statistics window and use the Change Univariate/Multivariate Mode icon on the RHS toolbar.  Multivariate mode shows the statistical results calculated using only samples which have valid results for ALL the selected elements. i.e will not include any samples that have a null value in any of the selected columns.

A: The Attribute Manager does not use percentiles but is binning data into equal bins.  The reported values for each percentile bin are the maximum values for each bin.  For example, for example, the dataset 1,2,3,4 split into two bins will have maxima of 2 and 4 yet the 50th percentile value is 2.5.  The Summary Statistics utility uses an algorithm documented in http://commons.apache.org/math/apidocs/org/apache/commons/math/stat/descriptive/rank/Percentile.html.

A. PCA without “robustness” or scaling is a simple technique (what rotation of the data will appear to maximize the variance?) and the answer is unambiguous.  However when scaling is introduced there are many options and most other statistics tools are very complex to use. In ioGAS the only scaling we allow is z-score scaling.

 What is happening is that the data are ‘stretched’ along the principal axes (proportional to SD) before the ‘rotation’ of the PCA.  When data is z-scaled it is a mathematical fact that the covariance matrix (used by PCA) becomes a correlation matrix. We have taken a simple approach as described in the publication Campbell, N.A. 1980.  Robust procedures in multivariate analysis. I: Robust covariance estimation.  Appl. Statist., 29, 231-237.  What is happening here is that ‘outliers’ are down-weighted in the calculations of the covariance matrix (this weighted covariance is fed back into the mahalanobis distance calculation that produces the weights, and this is repeated until convergence).  This results in a final covariance matrix that can be used to perform a PCA (or other things) that “ignores” the outliers.

In version 3.4 step one is to z-scale the data, step two is to compute the robust covariance matrix and step three is to use this matrix for the PCA.  The result of this is a covariance matrix that is not a correlation matrix.  The scaling was described as ‘z scaling’ rather than ‘correlation matrix’ in the robust user interface.  In version 4.0 the processing order was changed so that the robustness algorithm is used to down-weight the outlying data as the first step.  The second step is then to perform a correlation based PCA in the same way as the non-robust case. This is a neater combination of steps and the terms ‘correlation matrix’ and ‘z-scaling’ can be used interchangeably in all cases.

A: In the PCA calculation the default is to use multivariate data.  This means that there must be a valid entry for every variable used in the PCA calculation.  This error message indicates that there are no samples that contain a valid entry for all of variables used in the calculation.  To check whether the samples you wish to use are multivariate or not use the “Apply Attributes to all Rows (Selected Data Not Null)” option under the Validate menu.  You must select an attribute colour first in the Attribute Manager which will then be applied to all of the data points that contain a valid data entry for all the variables selected in the Select Variables dialog.  For more information view the “Identify Multivariate Samples” training video which will enable you see which samples are multivariate for the selected elements and which ones are not.

A: This message is mainly in place to prevent users from performing a PCA calculation and then running it again without realising that the Selected Variables dialog has been updated with the  PCA columns from the previous calculation.  Therefore the new PCA calculation would be using the previous PCA columns as the input columns.  Go back into the Select Variables dialog and make sure that the correct variables are selected and then continue.

This message generally indicates that there is a variable in the selection that has zero variance, ie. at detection limit.

A: This can happen when using poor quality data which contains a lot of samples with the same value for a variable or with data that is heavily quantized.

A: ioGAS has a column limit of 253.

If you hover over the line in the plot it gives you the equation in a tooltip.   You can’t automatically add it to the plot.  If you use the regression tool (from the Analysis menu) the reports contains the regression equation.

A: In ioGAS version 4.5, outlier points in Box and Whisker plot can be selected by clicking on the Attribute Polygon button (same button as in scatter plots), then drag a box around the points of interest to extract outlier points.

In version 4.4 and older, it is not possible to select the outlier points directly on the B&W plot, however if you go to ‘analysis>Auto-Attribute Tukey Outliers’, it will run the tukey algorithm and then automatically attribute any outlier data points.

A: This error can happen when the robust outlier rejection algorithm does not converge. This is more likely to happen if the data has the following characteristics:

- Many tied values: e.g. Column X and Y contains the same value for a number of rows

- Duplicate columns

- Columns with all constant or all zero

A: An overview of the mechanism used in Gauss levelling calculation can be found in the Help file under the Data Levelling section. A more detailed explanation is as follows:

1. The data is ranked.
2. The rank value is made into a p value using p = (Rank + 0.5)/size
3. The inverse cumulative probability (z) is calculated using this implementation http://commons.apache.org/math/apidocs/org/apache/commons/math/distribution/NormalDistributionImpl.html
4. These ‘z’ values are placed in a new column in ioGAS.

This is done one group at a time, and each group has no effect on any other. Small groups are ignored, so the output remains null for these groups.

A: Follow the steps outlined here to add a custom projection to the ioGAS projection library.

A: This is the export image file created from a gridded image in ioGAS.  A GeoTIFF image is an image format that also contains spatial information.  GeoTiff images can be opened into GIS software packages such as ArcView or MapInfo in the correct geographical space and also into any standard image processing software where they can be edited or saved into other image formats.

A: This is because these GIS programs cannot read the transparency correctly.  If the images are pasted into other programs such as Powerpoint or Word the “No Data” areas will display as transparent.  The No Data colour must be set to transparency within the MapInfo program once the GeoTiff file is imported.  By default the no data cells are changed to white in these GIS programs which may cause a problem if the colour stretch applied to the grid contains white for high values. In this instance we recommend making the “no data” colour one that is not used in the colour ramp, eg. black so that it can be selected in MapInfo or ArcGIS and then made transparent without affecting any “real” data grid cells.

The ArcGIS export is only available from this 32-bit version of ioGAS as the ArcGIS software is only available in 32-bit. Therefore you will need to install the 32-bit version of ioGAS to access this feature. If you are running 64-bit windows you can install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of ioGAS and licence them both using the same licence file. Server licence users just need to enter the server details into each installation (this is still equivalent to one server licence file).

You must have the ArcGIS program installed on your computer as ioGAS uses your ArcGIS software to generate the gdb and lyr files.

A: The ArcGIS export is only available in 32-bit version of ioGAS as the ArcGIS software is only available in 32-bit. This error message appears when you try to use the ArcGIS export in ioGAS 64-bit version. In ioGAS version 4.5, the ArcGIS export button has since been greyed out to prevent this error message from appearing.

A: It is not possible to import raster images into ioGAS. You will need to export the data points into a format that is readable in 3rd party packages to overlay on top of geology or aeromag image. ioGAS supports export as MapInfo tab file or as an ArcGIS ESRI layer file, which can be read in MapInfo or ArcGIS, respectively.

A: The Attribute Manager does not use percentiles but is binning data into equal bins.  The reported values for each percentile bin are the maximum values for each bin.  For example, for example, the dataset 1,2,3,4 split into two bins will have maxima of 2 and 4 yet the 50th percentile value is 2.5.  The Summary Statistics utility uses an algorithm documented in http://commons.apache.org/math/apidocs/org/apache/commons/math/stat/descriptive/rank/Percentile.html.

A: It is possible to multi-apply attributes to samples.  The attribute manager title bar will display which attributes are currently selected ready for attribution to samples.  To select an attribute go to the colour, shape or size tab and highlight it in the list.  Do this for any other attribute styles and then select the data in the plot window to update.

If you have other attributes selected, eg. shape or size and you just want to apply colour, then click on the highlighted shape or size entries to deselect them.

A: The automatic size ramps and colour palettes available from the pull-down lists in the Attribute Manager can only be applied to numeric variables.  If the size ramp or colour palette pull-down lists are greyed out then the currently displayed variable in the bottom left of the attribute manager is a text column.  Either select a numeric column or change the variable column-type to “numeric” in the Column Properties dialog.

A: You will need to close and then re-open the attribute manager before the new variable types are detected.

A: Make sure that the variable is a numeric column in the Column Properties dialog.  Select the numeric variable from the pull-down list in the Attribute Manager.  Make sure that the colour, shape or size tab is open so that the percentiles are displayed using the correct attribute style that you wish to apply.  Select the appropriate percentile bin option from the binning pull-down list. Click on the Auto-Attribute button to update the data points.

A: Yes.  Select any numeric column from the pull-down list in the Attribute Manager and then scroll to the bottom of the binning list and choose Edit.  Select New and change to Value. Click on the Add button (Green Plus) and enter the first cut-off value.  Repeat this process to add more entries and enter values.  Click OK to finish.

To apply to a dataset select the numeric column to use from the pull-down list, choose a colour ramp to apply and then select the saved binning range from the list. Click on the Auto-Attribute button to apply.

A. Select the Window>External Windows Always on Top menu option.  The Attribute Manager window will stay on top of all the other program windows when they are selected.  To make sure that the Attribute Manager does not obscure any program warning or error messages make sure it is not placed directly in the centre of the program where these messages normally appear.

A: Double-click in the name cell and enter a new value.  Hit enter or click outside of the row to exit.  In versions older than 4.2 left-mouse click once in the name cell to select it and then double-click in the cell to make it editable.

A: Manually create a colour/shape/size attribute combination in the Attribute Manager and then apply them to the high value samples either by individually selecting them in the plot window or drawing a polygon around a group of samples.  Alternatively, apply them to the selected data rows in a tabular data view.  Once the high values are attributed as a group they can be made invisible in the Attribute Manager so they don’t display on plots and are treated as a separate group when viewing statistics.  Another tool which can be used is the Analysis>Auto-Attribute Tukey Outliers to flag outliers and attribute them according to Tukey Box Plot calculations and then make these invisible in the Attribute Manager.

1.  Add a new colour in the Attribute Manager by clicking on the Add button in the Colour Tab

2. Select the New Colour row so it is highlighted and is says “New Colour” in the Attribute Manager title bar

3. Click on the plot window you wish to select the outliers and choose the Select Point or Select Polygon icon. Depending on tool either click on individual points or draw a polygon around a group of points by holding down the left mouse button.

4. When the selected points are attributed turn off the visiblity for these samples in the Attribute Manager.

A: In version 4.5, go to the installation folder (default C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS\data) and there should be a backup.binning.xml file in here.  Open up this file in Notepad to see that the original bin ranges are in here and then make a copy of this file in the user configuration directory in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS and change the name to binning.xml.  Re-start ioGAS and this should fix the problem.

If the problem still persists try uninstalling ioGAS and make sure you DELETE all of the left over files in the user configuration directory.  Then re-install ioGAS, copy in the licence file again and re-start ioGAS.  The bin ranges should then be restored.

In version 4.4 and older, go to the installation folder (default C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS\data) and there should be a backup.binning.xml file in here.  Open up this file in Notepad to see that the original bin ranges are in here and then make a copy of this file in the same directory and change the name to binning.xml.  Re-start ioGAS and this should fix the problem.

If the problem still persists try uninstalling ioGAS and make sure you DELETE all of the left over files in the Program Files area.  Then re-install ioGAS, copy in the licence file again and re-start ioGAS.  The bin ranges should then be restored.

This is a known bug in versions 4.2 and 4.3 and was fixed in v4.4.

A: The way the ordering works currently is that larger sized symbols plot underneath smaller sized symbols so they don’t obscure data.  Try making the samples you wish to plot on top smaller in size than the other samples and see if this makes a difference.  The way to do this would be to flag them so they can be selected as a group.

A: Once the *.gat file is loaded into the Attribute Manager the saved colour/shape/size groups are displayed under each tab.  To attribute the data using these settings select the Colour tab and then select the correct column that contains the entries listed under the Colour tab and click on the Auto-Attribute button.  When asked whether to use a New colour scheme or the Existing one click on the Existing button.  The data points should be then updated with the saved coloured and the row information updated for each group as well.  Repeat this process for the Shape and Size tabs.

A: It is not possible at present to save and re-load a saved attribute scheme using numeric columns.  Attribute schemes using text columns can be saved and re-loaded.

A: The Attribute Manager does not use percentiles but is binning data into equal bins.  The reported values for each percentile bin are the maximum values for each bin.  For example, the dataset 1,2,3,4 split into two bins will have maximum in each bin of 2 and 4 yet the 50th percentile value is 2.5.  The Summary Statistics utility uses an algorithm documented in http://commons.apache.org/math/apidocs/org/apache/commons/math/stat/descriptive/rank/Percentile.html.

A: Yes.  If you create a standard set of colours for specific groups (text categories eg. RockType) then you can click on the Save Attributes button which will create a saved table with those attributes.  Then if you bring in a new dataset you can click on the Load Attributes to load the attribute scheme into the Attribute Manager, then choose the corresponding column which contains the codes/groups used in the scheme and then click on the Apply Attributes button.  When asked whether to use the existing colours (that have just been loaded) select YES and the new data should be coloured according to your saved colour scheme.

A: Yes.  In version 4.5, this can be done by modifying the colouring.xml file located in user configuration area in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS. In version 4.4 and older, the colouring.xml file is located in C:\Program files (x86)\ioGAS\data folder (or equivalent 64-bit folder).  The colours are entered as RGB values and the size represents the proportion of the colour ramp assigned to that colour. Open up the colouring.xml file into a text editor such as NotePad or WordPad or even better is Notepad ++ as this colour codes the different xml text making it easier to edit.  Make a copy of one of the other colour ramps and give it a new name and change to the values you want.  See Add Custom Colour Ramp for more information.

Check whether you have write permission to the location where the new/edited bin ranges are saved. The file is called binning.xml and in ioGAS version 4.5 is located in the user configuration area (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS). In ioGAS version 4.4 and before, the file is located in the data folder in the ioGAS installation folder, eg. C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS\data. If you do not have write permission to the Program Files area then you cannot save any new bin ranges.

If you click on the “Lock” icon on the plot window RHS toolbar (3^rd one from the bottom) before you make a row invisible it will lock the view and the window will not re-size when you turn the visibility of data on/off. You can then use the “Unlock” icon to go back to the way the plot window normally works which is to zoom to the extents of the visible data.

A: The only way to do this in ioGAS is by making the desired selection, and turn off the visibility for all the other data. Then use the Edit>Remove Invisible Rows menu options to physically remove the invisible data points from view. The values of the other colour, shape, size attributes will then be relevant to just this subset of data. Although the warning messages says the removal is permanent, you can always use the File>Revert menu option to get all of the data points back again. Note that saving the session will remove the invisible data permanently.

A: Follow the steps outlined here to add a custom projection to the ioGAS projection library.

A: Make sure you have selected North and East column types in the Data>Column Properties dialog

A: The Attribute Map view (or pseudo-map as it is not a true GIS layer) allows the user to see the currently applied attributes (colour/shape/size) for each sample in a spatial (north vs east) view.  Only one map will be displayed.  The Ranked Variable Map view displays a separate map view for each selected variable within the one window.  The element views show ranked values for each variable displayed using a colour ramp and a size ramp that increases from lowest to highest ranked values.

A. You must have lat/long WGS84 coords in the dataset file and make sure they are selected in the Special Column area of the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Make an Attribute Map and while this window is the current (active) window click the Export to Google Earth icon on right-hand toolbar.  This will save the map as .KMZ file that can then be opened into Google Earth.

A: For each drillhole you need X, Y and Z coordinates generated for each sample interval prior to importing the data into ioGAS.  In the Data>Column Properties dialog match the X column to the Easting, Y column to Northing and Z column to Elevation. The data is now ready to be displayed in a 3D spatial plot.

A: No.  It is not possible to de-survey drillholes in ioGAS.  This will need to be done outside of ioGAS in another program and then imported.

Users who are running MapInfo/Discover can calculate XYZ coordinates using one the Drillhole menu options when they have a drillhole project open and many other mining software programs will also be able to generate 3D downhole coordinates as well.

A: Try subsetting the drillhole data (ie. turning off a number of drillholes/sample points in the Attribute Manager) to less than 40,000 visible points and then see if the icon becomes active.  If so, open the 3D spatial window and then turn on the visibility for the other data points. There is a data limit set for the number of points that is preventing all of the data being able to be opened into the 3D plot window initially so the workaround is to only open a small number of data points first of all.

A: Make sure the dataset contains columns for Lat/Long WGS84 and these are set as the columns to use to export for Google Earth in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Google Earth requires spatial data to have this projection.

The ArcGIS export is only available from this 32-bit version of ioGAS as the ArcGIS software is only available in 32-bit. Therefore you will need to install the 32-bit version of ioGAS to access this feature. If you are running 64-bit windows you can install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of ioGAS and licence them both using the same licence file. Server licence users just need to enter the server details into each installation (this is still equivalent to one server licence file).

You must have the ArcGIS program installed on your computer as ioGAS uses your ArcGIS software to generate the gdb and lyr files.

The Ranked Variable Plots show the data values for each selected variable from smallest to largest (ranked) with a selected colour ramp and size ramp to emphasise higher values as desired.

The Attribute Map on the other hand does have provision to display the values for a variable using a number of different percentile binning ranges or you can create your own custom data ranges. Rather than generating multiple plots like the Ranked Variable Plot menu option does the Attribute Map reflects the data columns used in the Attribute Manager to apply colour/shape/size to each data point in the map using up to three different variables. So to display each sample according to a 5 equal ranges binning range you just need to click on the Colour tab, select a numeric variable from the pull-down list, select a colour ramp and the binning range then click on the Auto-Attribute button. If you would like to size the data points according to the variable values as well then just select the Size tab, the variable column and click on Auto-Attribute so that the data points are both coloured and sized according to their values.

It is not currently possible to have a gridded stream image below a soil point map in ioGAS 4.4 but you will be able to in ioGAS 4.5 provided the both types of data are in the same ioGAS file.

A: The first thing to do is to check the coordinates of the imported data points in Mapinfo. When all of your data points have coordinate values that are outside the range of acceptable values for a UTM zone, it will plot as a single point or as a line in Mapinfo. Then check if the coordinate system you are using in ioGAS is the same one as the one you are using in Mapinfo.

If the solutions outlined above do not work, we have encountered this sort of problem where the language of the operating system (in this case Windows in Portuguese) is not the same as the language used in Mapinfo and ioGAS (both in English). In this situation, the solution was to install Windows English language pack and change the language of the operating system to English when running ioGAS and MapInfo (Go to Control Panel | Region and Language Settings and then add English from Install/uninstall languages…).

A: It is not possible to tell ioGAS what zone your data is in. Spatial plots in ioGAS are generated using X vs Y coordinates so they do not have any concept of UTM Zone. If you want to display your data properly in ioGAS you would need to make sure the coordinates all relate to the same zone.

A: In ioGAS version 4.5, outlier points in Box and Whisker plot can be selected by clicking on the Attribute Polygon button (same button as in scatter plots), then drag a box around the points of interest to extract outlier points.

In version 4.4 and older, it is not possible to select the outlier points directly on the B&W plot, however if you go to ‘analysis>Auto-Attribute Tukey Outliers’, it will run the tukey algorithm and then automatically attribute any outlier data points.

A. Hover cursor over main box and view in tooltip.  Copy all Box Plot statistics to text editor such as Word or NotePad using the Copy button on the RHS toolbar.

A. Copy all Box Plot statistics to text editor such as Word or NotePad using Copy button on RHS toolbar.

A: In ioGAS version 4.5, outlier points in Box and Whisker plot can be selected by clicking on the Attribute Polygon button (same button as in scatter plots), then drag a box around the points of interest to extract outlier points.

In version 4.4 and older, it is not possible to select the outlier points directly on the B&W plot, however if you go to ‘analysis>Auto-Attribute Tukey Outliers’, it will run the tukey algorithm and then automatically attribute any outlier data points.

The algorithm was not changed but the outlier values that we report in the tooltip has changed. In v4.3 we reported the near and far outlier min and max SAMPLE values and in v4.4 we have changed this to report the near and far outlier THRESHOLD values.

You can make box-plot graphs comparing soil and sediments for the same parameter using the following steps:

 1.            Select the variables you want to look at it the Data>Select Variables window

2.            Use the Colour attribute in the Attribute Manager to colour the samples by sample type – soil and sediment (they will need to be in the same file)

3.            Select Graph>Tukey Box Plots (common Y axis) menu option

A: If you are using two calculated columns to make a diagram they must be created in the same calculation window at the same time rather than by two separate calculations.  This is the way the program has been designed and the reason behind this is that as each of the variables is assigned a term, eg. A, B, C, etc which is used in the calculated expression.  If there is more than calculation file then it would be possible to have duplicate terms being used in which reference different variables. Eg. A = SiO2% in the first calculation but A = Al2O3% in the second calculation.  This information is all stored in the underlying XML and within the ioGAS file so by having all the calculations done together each variable is assigned a unique term.

A. If an input column in a calculated expression contains 0′s then when the calculation is run the calculated column will report blanks for the 0 entries. A red warning is displayed down in the status bar that the Selected data contains Infinite Values. This warning is also displayed when the calculated column is selected in the Select Variables dialog. To prevent an empty plot window from opening try one of the following options:

1. Select the variables containing null values in the Select Variables dialog and then use the Validate>Data Doctor menu option prior to calculating the column to convert the 0 values to null. The XY plots will then display the remaining valid data.
2. If the calculated column is already created,  attribute all of the blank records in the tabular data view with a colour and then make this colour group invisible in the Attribute Manager. When the XY plot is calculated all of the other valid data points now plot.
3. Clean data prior to import

A. If you wanted to add 1 to all sample values over 100 ppm (and leave all sample values < 100 as 0) for example then the syntax would be along the lines of:

Input Column = Cu_ppm = A

Expression: If (A>100,A+1,0)

The If statement has three components:

• The selection expression: eg. A>100

• The result if not 0: eg. A+1

• The if 0: eg. 0

See Calculation Syntax for more information on creating expressions.

A. If an input column in an expression contains null data then no results will be calculated for any output columns for the null records.  This is regardless of whether the input column is used in the calculated expression for that column but only when working in Multivariate mode.  Multivariate mode requires that records must contain a valid data value for all input columns otherwise the output columns will record null values.  To enable the calculations to run independently of each other uncheck the Multivariate mode box so that univariate mode is used.

A: Fe analyses may be reported either as total iron or as explicit ferrous (Fe2+) or ferric (Fe3+) values.  Sometimes Fe data must be in a specific format before samples can be used in a calculation.  To make sure that ioGAS uses the correct column values the following aliases are available:

          ·       Fe – Total Fe

          ·       Fe2O3 – Total ferric (3+) oxide

          ·       FeO – Total ferrous (2+) oxide

          ·       Fe2O3* – Explicit ferric (3+) oxide

          ·       FeO* – Explicit ferrous (2+) oxide

Calculations which require an Fe component in most cases will have a (Total Iron) and an explicit (Fe2+_Fe3+) version to choose from.  The (Total Iron) version requires one of Fe, Fe2O3 or FeO to be aliased.  The (Fe2+_Fe3+) version requires two Fe columns of data to be aliased to Fe2O3* and FeO* otherwise the calculation or diagram will be greyed out.

It is possible to calculate explicit Fe2+ or Fe3+ values from total Fe values (and vice versa) using a variety of methods, some of which can be found under the Calculations menu.  Use these calculations to converted data into the correct Fe format required.

A: Converting from Ca_pct to CaO_pct:

1. Make sure that Ca_pct is aliased in the Data>Column Properties dialog

2. Select Calculation>New Geochem Calculation

3. In the Input Columns drop-down list see how CaO_pct is bolded as well as Ca_pct. Even if you only have Ca_pct in your dataset all of the bolded elements are ones that ioGAS can automatically convert between as it knows your input element/units column. So, from the Input Columns list choose CaO_pct

5. If you don’t want to use the CaO_pct column in another expression remove the Output Columns line using the MINUS button on the right hand side

6. Check the Make Input Columns box

7. Click Calculate All and the CaO_pct column should be added to your dataset.

A: This can be explained using an example. I have 4 columns: P_ppm, Ti_ppm, P2O5_pct and TiO2_pct. The first two columns (P_ppm and Ti_ppm) have data in all rows. Most of the rows in the last two columns (P2O5 and TiO2) are empty, with some cells containing values. I want to populate the remaining cells in the last two columns using Make Input Columns in Create New Geochem Calculation, and by selecting P2O5 and TiO2 as the input columns. However, no values were created to fill the empty cells in P2O5 and TiO2.

The overriding principle with element conversion in ioGAS is that it won’t run calculation to create something that already exists. In this case, the conversion will not create any values for columns P2O5 and TiO2, because ioGAS assumes that the existing values are correct. If the original columns for P2O5 and TiO2 are renamed (e.g. to P2O5_pct_ and TiO2_pct_), then the columns for P2O5 and TiO2 will be populated with values. However, if the original columns for P2O5 and TiO2 are removed, ioGAS will recalculate the columns.

A. In order for a diagram to be active (ie. not greyed out) make sure that firstly, the dataset contains the elements required by the diagram in some form and that secondly, the element columns have been aliased in the Data>Column Properties dialog.

In this dialog all of the columns in the dataset listed on the left hand side.  If they are already aliased then they will have a green dot next to them.  If they are not aliased then click on the Guess Aliases button to automatically match your column names with the standard ioGAS ones.  Please check each one to make sure that the correct element/unit combination has been assigned to the columns.  Close this dialog and go back to the diagrams menu and the diagrams should now be available for selection.

If only selected diagrams are greyed out then it means that the required element columns which need to be used in the diagram axes are missing from the dataset.  Hover the cursor over the greyed out diagram to view what elements are missing.  If the variables are in the dataset check that they are not set as text columns.

A: Yes.  When you have a diagram open use the icons on the RHS toolbar such as Colour Rows by Polygon, Shape Rows by Polygon, Size Rows by Polygon to attribute the data.  To save the attributes as new columsn in the dataset select the appropriate Make Variable From… option from the Data menu.

Fe analyses may be reported either as total iron or as explicit ferrous (Fe2+) or ferric (Fe3+) values.  Sometimes Fe data must be in a specific format before samples can be displayed on a classification diagram.  To make sure that ioGAS uses the correct column values the following aliases are available:

          ·       Fe – Total Fe

          ·       Fe2O3 – Total ferric (3+) oxide

          ·       FeO – Total ferrous (2+) oxide

          ·       Fe2O3* – Explicit ferric (3+) oxide

          ·       FeO* – Explicit ferrous (2+) oxide

Diagrams which require an Fe component in most cases will have a (Total Iron) and an explicit (Fe2+_Fe3+) version to choose from.  The (Total Iron) version requires one of Fe, Fe2O3 or FeO to be aliased. The (Fe2+_Fe3+) version requires two Fe columns of data to be aliased to Fe2O3* and FeO* otherwise the calculation or diagram will be greyed out.

It is possible to calculate explicit Fe2+ or Fe3+ values from total Fe values (and vice versa) using a variety of methods, some of which can be found under the Calculations menu.  Use these calculations to converted data into the correct Fe format required.

A. In the Auto Contour Settings dialog make sure that the Remove Existing Shapes box is unchecked.

A. Organise the user diagrams into a sub-menu system in the C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS\data\Diagrams.  The sub-folders will still appear under the User>Diagram menu.

A. Yes.  Additional locations can be added to the Diagram.location.ini file located in the C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS folder (default installation folder on 32 and 64-bit computers).  See Share Diagrams with Other Users for more information.

Yes. To remove the last created node/vertex in a polyline or polygon hold down the Ctrl-Z keys on keyboard.  Keep clicking Ctrl-Z to remove vertices in the reverse order in which they were created.

The line labels cannot be moved but a workaround is available.  Select Change Shape Properties from the RHS toolbar and clear the label entry next to the appropriate line. Exit this dialog and then manually add a label directly onto the diagram using the Add Label tool from the RHS toolbar and place it where you want it to appear in relation to the line.

A:  In ioGAS version 4.5, you can create XY Diagram with log scale axis by going to Diagrams>New logarithmic XY diagrams. In ioGAS version 4.4 and older, creating diagrams with a log scale axis is not supported.  As a workaround create logged columns for selected data variables first using the Quick Calculations>Log base 10 menu option and then create a new XY Diagram using these logged columns as the axes.

A: To change the Title for your New XY diagram click on the Edit Diagram Properties icon from the Right-Hand side toolbar. If the toolbar is not in view just click in the New Diagram Window titlebar to make the window active and the toolbar should appear.  You can then change the diagram name and also add in any additional comments or references by clicking on the green plus button. If you want the diagram to open at a particular zoom you can set this up in the diagram window and then use the Save Bounds button to save this view.  Whenever you open the diagram in future it will open to this view.

To change the names for the labels click on the Change Shape Properties  icon on the RHS toolbar.  Each label has individual entry which you can change the name and colour (by clicking on the colour box).  If you create any points, lines or polygons these will also appear in this dialog so that you can rename them, change line slope/intercepts and change colour.  You can turn off any objects from displaying by unchecking the box next to each object and to permanently delete objects just uncheck them and then select Delete Invisible.

A: If you are using two calculated columns to make a diagram they must be created in the same calculation window at the same time rather than by two separate calculations.  This is the way the program has been designed and the reason behind this is that as each of the variables is assigned a term, eg. A, B, C, etc which is used in the calculated expression.  If there is more than calculation file then it would be possible to have duplicate terms being used in which reference different variables. Eg. A = SiO2% in the first calculation but A = Al2O3% in the second calculation.  This information is all stored in the underlying XML and within the ioGAS file so by having all the calculations done together each variable is assigned a unique term.

A: If you just want to create a vertical line in an XY Diagram then try using the Polyline tool.  This allows you to create a line anywhere in the diagram and does not require a slope/Y-intercept.  If you need to edit the node coordinates open up the saved XML file into a text editor such as WordPad or Notepad and manually change the X and Y coordinates for each node and re-save.

A: You need to select one of the New XY Diagram or New Ternary Diagram options from the Diagram menu first.  When you have the new diagram window open the Create Contour Polygon utility is the 9th icon down on the RHS toolbar.  Once you have created the contours to your satisfaction you can then use the Save button on the RHS toolbar (near the bottom) to save the contours as polygons in the new diagram which you can then use to classify other datasets.

A: To remove the Bin “0″ labels go to the Change Shape Properties icon on the RHS toolbar (13th from top).  You can either rename the entries or just clear them so no text appears.  If you want to remove contours from the plot altogether just click on the tick next to the Bin to uncheck it and then select Delete Invisible.  This will permanently remove any bins/polygons you don’t want.

A: Firstly, to see what the various binning entries are take a look in the contour_binning.xml file.  This file resides in the data folder on the ioGAS installation folder (eg. C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS\data).  To add a custom bin entry say for the 50th and 80th percentiles at the bottom, copy and paste an existing bin entry and make the changes as requied.  Save the contour_binning.xml file and re-start ioGAS for the changes to become available.  The bin percentiles represent the maximum value of the bin range.

As this is what we call a “free diagram” it means that you must have columns in your dataset called “Q”, “A” and “P” containing quartz, alkali feldspar and plagioclase values respectively. Once you have these in your dataset the diagram should become active (ie. Not greyed out).

A: Unfortunately, at the moment it is not possible to remove the word [Locked] from the axis label when you have the axis locked. Thus the only way to remove the word [Locked] from the axis label of XY graphs is to unlock the axes. Note that this will distort the shape of line and polygon features in XY diagrams.

A: This is a problem that we have identified in ioGAS 4.5. This problem appears when your firewall settings are blocking ioGAS access to the new diagrams. When loading up ioGAS 4.5 for the first time, clicking Yes on the ioGAS 64-dialogue message which says “Diagram/Calculation/Spiderplot Updates” will require you to restart ioGAS to see the changes taking effect.

If you cannot see the splash screen for the diagram/calculation/spiderplot updates, please contact us for more information.

There are a number of things that you can check first of all:

- In ioGAS 4.5, the diagram.locations.ini file is located in the user area (i.e. <username>/AppData/Roaming/ioGAS/userConfig/). This is the one that users are meant to edit for the changes to the diagram pathways to be visible in ioGAS.

-When adding a pathway to a folder where user diagrams are stored, it is preferable to insert a direct pathway to the actual folder rather than typing in the pathway to the root address. For example, if user diagrams are located in I:/temp/diagrams/rock_class/, it would be better for the user to type in this pathway instead of I:/temp. The reason for this is because ioGAS looks through each of the sub-folders inside the specified location for diagram files. This can take a long time if the size of the folder is large or if there are numerous sub-folders to go through in the specified location.

A: This error message is caused by having non-calculation variables defined in the input columns in a calculation file. Take for example, a diagram.xml file for a plot with four elements – Ti, Zr, Nb and Y. The axis are derived from calculation based on these input variables. Axis X is Ti/Zr and axis Y is Nb/Y. These ratios are defined in the <GeochemFunction> row in the diagram. xml file.

This diagram will work fine when the user has assay data for the four elements (Ti, Zr, Nb and Y). But say for example, if a new batch of drillhole data came in and it does not have assay data for Nb, the diagram obviously won’t run. Then the first thing that the user would do is to remove Nb from the ratio calculation, and change the ratio to something arbritary (as an example, 50/Y instead of Nb/Y). But when the user does this, Nb is still referenced to in the diagram xml file as an input variable, and an error message will show up saying “Unable to open diagram. Nb_ppm – missing or non-numeric”.

To keep this error message from appearing, it is important to remove non-calculation variables from the list of input columns.

A: Yes. There are two ways that you can do this. One is to save the diagram boundaries by going to the Diagram Properties window (RHS toolbar> Edit Diagram Properties) and clicking on Save Bounds to preserve diagram boundaries in the diagram metadata. The other way is to manually edit the values in the diagram’s xml file. This is done by changing the values of the line in bold below:

<GeochemFunctionAxisX name=”testa” function=”A” log=”false”/>

   <GeochemFunctionAxisY name=”testb” function=”C” log=”true”/>

   <Bounds x=”0.001″ y=”0.001″ w=”13.0″ h=”750.0″ />

If you define the boundaries by changing the values in the bold line, then the diagram extents will be preserved from then on.

A. Exact name match with what is in the XML file always wins but if ioGAS needs to do any conversion and there is more than one possible source then the behaviour is indeterminate.

A. The stars indicate that it is a oxidation state specific analysis, so you only use these if you have Fe3+ and Fe2+ analyses directly from the laboratory.  Fe3+ data should be aliased to Fe2O3* and Fe2+ data should be aliased to FeO*.  The specific oxidation state of iron is used in certain classification diagrams and calculations and both Fe2O3* and FeO* must be aliased otherwise the diagram or calculation will be greyed out.

 Fe, FeO and Fe2O3 are treated as total iron. FeO is total iron expressed as ferrous oxide and Fe2O3 is total iron expressed as ferric oxide.

See Calculation>Provided menu to convert Fe data to total or explicit Fe states if they are not already available in the dataset.

A: Rename the existing Cu_ppm column by typing directly into the Alias column in the Column Properties dialog. Once this column is re-named it will become just a numeric column with a blue dot next to it.  You should be able to alias the other Cu column to Cu_ppm now.

A: Follow the steps outlined here to add a custom projection to the ioGAS projection library.

A: It is not possible to tell ioGAS what zone your data is in. Spatial plots in ioGAS are generated using X vs Y coordinates so they do not have any concept of UTM Zone. If you want to display your data properly in ioGAS you would need to make sure the coordinates all relate to the same zone.

A. Copy all Box Plot statistics to text editor such as Word or NotePad using Copy button on RHS toolbar.

A. Use the Copy Entire Window at High Resolution window button at the bottom of the RHS toolbar when the scatterplot matrix window is open.  This will copy the entire window as a bitmap image to the Clip Board which you can then paste into an image processing program (eg. Paint or Irfanview, Paint Shop Pro, etc) and then print to your plotter from here.

A:  It sounds like the data limits for the installed ioGAS executable file have been reached.  Although ioGAS could successfully create the SPLOM copying to the clipboard was unable to be completed.  For more memory intensive operations such as creating large SPLOM plots (and in this case copying to clipboard), gridding or even just importing large files it is possible to load up additional ioGAS executable files which enable more machine memory to be utilised.  See Data Limits for more information on how to do this.

A: There is an issue with importing vector files into an image editing program in which shapes don’t retain their original form as seen in ioGAS. This was quite apparent when circular shapes are being imported as diamond or square shapes. This only happens when you copy graphs straight from the right-click menu in ioGAS (i.e. Right click>Copy>Copy EMF or Copy EPS) and into an image editing program. By saving the plot as an EPS or EMF format from the right click menu (Right click>Save>Save EPS or Save EMF) and bringing that in to an image editing program, the shapes will now look correct.

A: In the PCA calculation the default is to use multivariate data.  This means that there must be a valid entry for every variable used in the PCA calculation.  This error message indicates that there are no samples that contain a valid entry for all of variables used in the calculation.  To check whether the samples you wish to use are multivariate or not use the “Apply Attributes to all Rows (Selected Data Not Null)” option under the Validate menu.  You must select an attribute colour first in the Attribute Manager which will then be applied to all of the data points that contain a valid data entry for all the variables selected in the Select Variables dialog.  For more information view the “Identify Multivariate Samples” training video which will enable you see which samples are multivariate for the selected elements and which ones are not.

A: This can happen when using poor quality data which contains a lot of samples with the same value for a variable or with data that is heavily quantized.

A: ioGAS has a column limit of 253.

A: An overview of the mechanism used in Gauss levelling calculation can be found in the Help file under the Data Levelling section. A more detailed explanation is as follows:

1. The data is ranked.
2. The rank value is made into a p value using p = (Rank + 0.5)/size
3. The inverse cumulative probability (z) is calculated using this implementation http://commons.apache.org/math/apidocs/org/apache/commons/math/distribution/NormalDistributionImpl.html
4. These ‘z’ values are placed in a new column in ioGAS.

This is done one group at a time, and each group has no effect on any other. Small groups are ignored, so the output remains null for these groups.

A: This menu item can be used to apply the currently highlighted attribute/s in the Attribute Manager to those samples which contain valid data entries in all of the selected columns.  For example, if you wish to show those samples that are multivariate in Cu, Pb, Zn:

1.         Choose Cu, Pb, Zn variables in the Select Variables dialog
2.         Add a new red colour attribute in the Attribute Manager and make sure it is selected (the line will be blue and the title bar will say “New Colour”)
3.         Click on the Validate>Apply attributes to all rows (selected data not null) menu option. Only those samples with valid Cu, Pb and Zn values in them will be coloured red in the plot windows and in the tabular data view.

A. Yes.

A. The >10000 cells will be treated as text even if the rest of the column contains numeric values.  Select this column in the Select Variables dialog and bring into the Data Doctor.  The >10000 entries will be displayed along with a recommended numeric replacement value, eg. 10000.1.  This value can be overwritten and then all >10000 values updated with this.

A: Select the column that contains the nulls in the Select Variables dialog and then go to the Data Doctor tool located under the Validate menu.  This tool will display all of the “problem” data in a column such as nulls, 0’s, below detection limit, text entries etc and suggests replacement values that can be overwritten by custom values if desired.  The changes are also stored in a log file so you can see everything that has been done to a dataset since it has been imported into ioGAS.

A: Make sure that you are using the Files of Type: Grid Image option in the MapInfo File>Open dialog and not the Raster Image option instead.

A: The installation has not fully downloaded from the website.  Download the software again and make sure it has completely downloaded before starting the installation.

A: This message is sometimes caused by insufficient memory being made available by Windows to java/ioGAS.  A workaround for this is to start C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS\ioGAS1.exe which is built to request less memory.

A: Check the following:

1.  The copied licence file is named correctly. When copying the licence file attachment from some public email providers the “.” may be replaced with “_” and the licence file will not be recognised. Eg. gas.single.glc is the correct name.
2. In ioGAS version 4.5, make sure you are copying the license file (gas.single.glc) to the following directory: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS
3. In ioGAS version 4.4 and older, you need to have permission to write to the installation folder. The easiest way to do this is to right-mouse click in the installation folder (default C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS) in Windows Explorer and create and save a new text file. If you can’t do this then don’t have write permissions for this folder which you must have in order to run ioGAS.
4. In ioGAS version 4.4 and older, if you are running Microsoft Windows 7 it is not possible to save the licence file attachment from an email directly into the installation folder so although it may look like the file is there it has a lock on it which is preventing it from being read by ioGAS. Copy the licence file to another location on your computer first (eg. desktop or Temp directory) and then paste it into the installation folder.

A. Every computer has a unique Machine ID.  An ioGAS single-seat licence is locked to this Machine ID which means that the software can only be run on this computer.  The error message indicates that the Machine ID in the licence file does not match the computer Machine ID on which the software is installed.  Please contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net for assistance.

A: When an ioGAS software licence is “in maintenance” the latest version of the software can be installed. If the maintenance period has expired then the licence file can only run with any version of the software released before the maintenance expiry date.  If this message appears it means that a later version of the ioGAS software is installed than the version you are permitted to run with the existing licence file.

If you want to run the ioGAS software then you will need to either pay any outstanding maintenance fees so that you can load up the lastest version of the software and receive technical support or re-install an earlier version of the software that is compatible with your existing licence file.  For more information about renewing maintenance please contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net.

A: ioGAS cannot detect a valid licence in the expected location and the two week trial period has ended.

For users who can connect to an ioGAS server licence within their organisation click YES and enter the connection details into the next dialog. Re-start ioGAS for the connection details to be recognised by ioGAS.

If you have purchased ioGAS then make sure that the licence file has been copied to the correct location in the installation folders as outlined in the licence file email.

Users who have purchased the software and require a valid licence file must click NO and then copy and paste the Machine ID listed in the next window into an email and send to ioGAS.licence@ioAnalytics.net.  Once the licence file is issued, copy it to the location outlined in the accompanying email and then re-start ioGAS.

A: Users running academic or fixed-term licences (eg. Extended Evaluation, Server Stand-Alone) will receive this message when the licence expiry date has passed and ioGAS is started.  If your organisation is running a server licence which has been renewed select YES and enter in the connection details. Re-start ioGAS for the details to be recognised by ioGAS.  Users needing to purchase the software or renew their licences please contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net.

A: Check with your IT or ioGAS Admin person within your organisation that the server licence file is installed in the correct location and has not reached the expiry date.  Ensure that the date/time on the host machine is set correctly. Check also that the details entered in the Help>Server Licence Configuration dialog within the ioGAS software on the user machine is correct.  If the server licence is in place and is valid and connection details are correct restart ioGAS.  If the problem still persists the IT people should try stopping and starting the ioAnalytics Service on the host server.  Contact us if you require instructions on how to do this.

A:   This means that the amount of memory to open the dataset in its entirety is not available. As users have computers of different memory capacities, ioGAS has developed a number of additional executable files which are designed to utilise more memory on computers with more RAM. For example, the default 32-bit installation executable file is designed for computers running 1Gb of RAM. For users who are running 2Gb RAM computers and are having trouble opening or importing large files try running the ioGAS3.exe file or even the ioGAS4.exe file located in the program installation folder. Each executable file has data limits based on the number of data cells that be opened (rows x columns), the number of cells that can be gridded or the number of points that can be displayed on a Scatter Plot Matrix (SPLOM). The 64-bit version also has a number of executable files to choose from which can utilise up to 6 and 8 Gb RAM respectively. See Large File Handling & Data Limits for more information on these limits and how to use the additional executable files.

A: This message will appear as the rows in the file are actually unequal in length. ie. contain extra commas. The commas may be present in a description field so check that the imported data appears in the correct columns in ioGAS.

A: Check that the file is not in Excel v5.0/95 Workbook format.  ioGAS does not support excel files in this version so save the file as either Excel 97-2003 Workbook (*.xls) or the latest Excel Workbook (*.xlsx) and re-import.

Also make sure that the Excel worksheet you are importing does not contain formulae.  Try copying the data into a new worksheet by left mouse clicking on the top left border cell in the worksheet in Excel to highlight all the columns and rows in the dataset.  Once they are highlighted right mouse click in the top left border cell in the worksheet and select Copy.  Right mouse click again in the top left border cell in the worksheet and select Paste Special.  In the Paste Special dialog select Values. Click OK to paste the values.  The worksheet should now be a flat table that does not contain any formulae.  Re-import this worksheet into ioGAS.

A. This error generally appears when there are international characters in the dataset such as umulats or accents.  This was fixed in ioGAS v3.2.

A: This error generally occurs when Microsoft office 32-bit is installed on a Windows 64-bit operating system machine.  In order for the ODBC database link to work in the 64-bit version of  ioGAS then the 64-bit ODBC drivers need to be installed. This will happen automatically if a 64-bit version of Microsoft Office is installed.  Alternatively, install the 32-bit version of ioGAS (on the 64-bit machine) and the ODBC connection can run with the 32-bit Microsoft Office ODBC drivers.

A:  ioGAS can only display up to 2000 data points per group as specified in the Line Plot tool.  If there is a group with greater than this number of data points then the data will not be displayed in the line plot. In older versions than ioGAS 4.4 the limit is 1500.

It means that there are entries in the Mode column which are blank/null or a text string which is not recognised by the program.  To fix open the data file and remove any entries that are null or other text such as Calcheck, Standard, etc. and import the file again.

The import tool can only read Olympus/Innov-X data files which have been captured in either Soil mode or Mining mode.  This is generally designated by either an “S” for soil or “M” for mining.  This error message means that there is an entry in the Mode column which is not one of these (and may be even a null/blank entry) and this must be fixed or removed before the data can be imported into ioGAS.  Other modes, such as Two Beam Mining, etc. should still import OK provided that all the entries in the Mode are the same.

A: This message is mainly in place to prevent users from performing a PCA calculation and then running it again without realising that the Selected Variables dialog has been updated with the  PCA columns from the previous calculation.  Therefore the new PCA calculation would be using the previous PCA columns as the input columns.  Go back into the Select Variables dialog and make sure that the correct variables are selected and then continue.

This message generally indicates that there is a variable in the selection that has zero variance, ie. at detection limit.

A: If you are using two calculated columns to make a diagram they must be created in the same calculation window at the same time rather than by two separate calculations.  This is the way the program has been designed and the reason behind this is that as each of the variables is assigned a term, eg. A, B, C, etc which is used in the calculated expression.  If there is more than calculation file then it would be possible to have duplicate terms being used in which reference different variables. Eg. A = SiO2% in the first calculation but A = Al2O3% in the second calculation.  This information is all stored in the underlying XML and within the ioGAS file so by having all the calculations done together each variable is assigned a unique term.

ioGAS has a column limit of 253. If a file has more columns than this then they will not be imported.

Try downloading and installing the 64-bit version of Java from the following webpage:

 http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

 Once installed, try starting ioGAS again and this should fix the problem.

A: This is a known bug with the MapInfo/Discover 2012.0.1 upgrade. Click here to download a fix for this problem. Unzip the folder and copy the DLL file into the C:\Program Files (x86)\MapInfo\Professional\Discover folder on your computer and re-start.

A: When you open a provided diagram in ioGAS, the program will run calculations to create the columns that will be used as the axis values in the diagram. If you already have a column with the same name as a column used for one or more axes in the diagram, ioGAS will ask you if it is ok for the calculation to voerwrite your existing columns. If you choose No, then ioGAS won’t overwrite your columns and your database won’t be affected. You can create a diagram and still keep your columns with the same name, but you need to change the names of your existing column to prevent the warning message from showing.

A: This error message is caused by having non-calculation variables defined in the input columns in a calculation file. Take for example, a diagram.xml file for a plot with four elements – Ti, Zr, Nb and Y. The axis are derived from calculation based on these input variables. Axis X is Ti/Zr and axis Y is Nb/Y. These ratios are defined in the <GeochemFunction> row in the diagram. xml file.

This diagram will work fine when the user has assay data for the four elements (Ti, Zr, Nb and Y). But say for example, if a new batch of drillhole data came in and it does not have assay data for Nb, the diagram obviously won’t run. Then the first thing that the user would do is to remove Nb from the ratio calculation, and change the ratio to something arbritary (as an example, 50/Y instead of Nb/Y). But when the user does this, Nb is still referenced to in the diagram xml file as an input variable, and an error message will show up saying “Unable to open diagram. Nb_ppm – missing or non-numeric”.

To keep this error message from appearing, it is important to remove non-calculation variables from the list of input columns.

Check firewall settings and make sure that the machine has permission to open a TCP/IP socket to connect to the server.

A: The file you are trying to open may contain a derived column with a comma in the name. This can corrupt the column, causing the file to not open at all – and ultimately resulting in the error message above. To avoid this from happening, it is not recommended to put a comma in a column name.

If possible, send the broken file to us for us to examine.

A: This error message comes up when there is a data cell with 0 or negative values in one of the columns used to make a diagram or spiderplot. To resolve this issue, use the data doctor to check that the data columns used in the creation of the diagram does not contain negative or 0 values.

A: This error can happen when the robust outlier rejection algorithm does not converge. This is more likely to happen if the data has the following characteristics:

- Many tied values: e.g. Column X and Y contains the same value for a number of rows

- Duplicate columns

- Columns with all constant or all zero

A: This error message is caused when the .gas file contains a column with no name. To prevent this error message from appearing, a user-created variable/column must contain at least one character (any character except a comma).

Turn off the visibility for all the other data points apart from the subset you have highlighted and then select File>Export Visible Rows and select CSV as the Files of type. Enter a filename and choose a location. Use the File>Export Selected Columns menu option if you only want to export selected columns (as displayed in the Select Variables dialog) as well as your visible rows.

A: Make sure you haven’t turned off gridlines for the plot using the show/hide gridlines icon (right hand tool bar, usually at the bottom of the bar).

A: ioGAS displays the sample number and the values for the displayed axes for many of the plots in ioGAS.  The cursor must be over the data point of interest for these values to display.  Only one value is displayed at a time.  For example, on the map view, the sample ID, northing, easting, and variable value are all displayed in a pop-up text box when the cursor is hovered over a plotted point.  If this information is not displaying, check that there are columns set as ‘Sample ID’, ‘North’, ‘East’ in the Column Properties dialog.  If you wish to view other columns as metadata, go to the Data>Select Labels menu option and add some more text columns to display.

A: Make sure you have variables selected in the Data>Select Variables dialog first. Different plots require different numbers of variables to be selected, eg. two for a scatterplot, three for a tri-plot, etc.

A: If you are making groups of data invisible or visible via the Attribute Manager, the scaling of the graph will change to reflect the visible data range.  As this may not be desirable, the padlock (lock axes) icon on the right hand tool bar can be used to prevent automatic scaling.

A: You have to select an attribute in the Attribute Manager first before selecting any point or polygon to apply. Add a new colour, shape or size combination and hightlight each one so that it appears in the Attribute Manager title bar. When an attribute manager combination is ready, the Select Point or Select Polygon icon should work.

A: Make sure that the column type for each variable matches the plot type being created e.g. text column types will not plot in box plots.

A: Make sure that all attributes in the 3 tabs (shape, colour, size) are set to visible in the attribute manager.   Also, check that the samples have a valid data entry for all the variables in the plot axes.

A: It is not possible to display a log axis on a plot if the data being plotted contains 0, negative or text values.  When you click on the Log icon and nothing happens check the bottom left hand corner of the status bar and if this is the problem you should see a red message in the bottom left hand corner of the screen which says “Unable of Log zero, negative or text data”.

To replace 0 or negative values in your data use the Validate>Data Doctor utility.

If you hover the stylus over the screen a black point follows the location of the tip and even when this passes over a point the label is displayed but not necessarily all the time.  If you actually place the stylus right on the point and leave it there for a moment it shows the label BUT you have to be right on the point and leave the stylus there for a moment for ioGAS to register the location.

A: Right-mouse click on the individual plot and select Properties.  In here you can change the plot or axes labels, axis ranges, plot background colour and more.  Note that it is not currently possible to save these changes to the ioGAS file.

A: Yes.  Make one window the active window and then go to Windows>Remember Window Size.  This will hold the current window size in memory so if you then select another window and choose Windows>Restore Window Size this will re-size the active window to the stored dimensions.

A: A transformation that is trying to estimate a value for lambda to de-skew data into a more normal distribution. See Power Transformation for more information.

It is not possible to embed the legend into a plot window but you can see the legend in a separate window by clicking on the blue circle icon on the main toolbar.

You can either just use the zoom tools on the RHS toolbar and zoom in on your cluster. The 4^th, 5^th and 6^th icons can all be used to achieve this.

If you want to specify a range to display you can right-mouse click on the plot and choose Properties. Under the  Plot tab you can set a minimum and maximum axis range here.

It is not possible to set a default font at this stage. It is possible to change individual plot font, size, etc using the Graph Properties option from the right-mouse click pop-up menu for individual plots.

If you click on the “Lock” icon on the plot window RHS toolbar (3^rd one from the bottom) before you make a row invisible it will lock the view and the window will not re-size when you turn the visibility of data on/off. You can then use the “Unlock” icon to go back to the way the plot window normally works which is to zoom to the extents of the visible data.

A: Follow the steps outlined here to add a custom projection to the ioGAS projection library.

A: Make sure you have set the correct columns for North and East in the Column Properties dialog and that the projection specified is the correct projection for these columns.

Images generated in ioGAS only have projection information if they are exported using the Export Images as Geotiffs icon from the Gridding RHS (Right-Hand Side) toolbar.  Copy/Paste images only contain image information not spatial information.

A: This is the export image file created from a gridded image in ioGAS.  A GeoTIFF image is an image format that also contains spatial information.  GeoTiff images can be opened into GIS software packages such as ArcView or MapInfo in the correct geographical space and also into any standard image processing software where they can be edited or saved into other image formats.

A. Make sure that the columns selected in the Column Properties dialog as East and North are compatible with the projection selected.  Eg. East/North and UTM projections or lat/long and lat/long projections. If the East/North columns are for a projected coordinate system but a lat/long geographic coordinate system (or vice versa) is selected as the Projection then the GeoTiff image cannot be displayed correctly.

A: This is because these GIS programs cannot read the transparency correctly.  If the images are pasted into other programs such as Powerpoint or Word the “No Data” areas will display as transparent.  The No Data colour must be set to transparency within the MapInfo program once the GeoTiff file is imported.  By default the no data cells are changed to white in these GIS programs which may cause a problem if the colour stretch applied to the grid contains white for high values. In this instance we recommend making the “no data” colour one that is not used in the colour ramp, eg. black so that it can be selected in MapInfo or ArcGIS and then made transparent without affecting any “real” data grid cells.

A: It is not possible to do this at present.

A. You must have lat/long WGS84 coords in the dataset file and make sure they are selected in the Special Column area of the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Make an Attribute Map and while this window is the current (active) window click the Export to Google Earth icon on right-hand toolbar.  This will save the map as .KMZ file that can then be opened into Google Earth.

A: Make sure the dataset contains columns for Lat/Long WGS84 and these are set as the columns for Google Earth export in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Google earth requires spatial data to have this projection.  If the wrong projection is used, Google Earth will either produce an error when trying to load the data or will display it in the wrong place.

A: Google Earth reduces point visibility for overlays with many points.  Try zooming in further and see if the data points become visible.  It may also help to make the sizes of the data points larger than 1 or 2 pt, which appear as very small dots in Google Earth.

A: The sample number is stored under the Placemark for each sample otherwise the number would be displayed at all times.  To view the variable value, sample number etc, within Google Earth hold the cursor over the point of interest and left click on it. The values should display in a tooltip.

A: KMZ is the file format used by Google Earth.  If you have Google Earth installed and double click on the *.KMZ file, the data will be automatically loaded into the Google Earth program and zoomed to the imported data location.  Alternatively, open Google Earth and then open the KMZ file from within this program.

A: Make sure the dataset contains columns for Lat/Long WGS84 and these are set as the columns to use to export for Google Earth in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Google Earth requires spatial data to have this projection.

A: Make sure you haven’t turned off gridlines for the plot using the show/hide gridlines icon (right hand tool bar, usually at the bottom of the bar).

A: ioGAS displays the sample number and the values for the displayed axes for many of the plots in ioGAS.  The cursor must be over the data point of interest for these values to display.  Only one value is displayed at a time.  For example, on the map view, the sample ID, northing, easting, and variable value are all displayed in a pop-up text box when the cursor is hovered over a plotted point.  If this information is not displaying, check that there are columns set as ‘Sample ID’, ‘North’, ‘East’ in the Column Properties dialog.  If you wish to view other columns as metadata, go to the Data>Select Labels menu option and add some more text columns to display.

A: Make sure you have variables selected in the Data>Select Variables dialog first. Different plots require different numbers of variables to be selected, eg. two for a scatterplot, three for a tri-plot, etc.

A: If you are making groups of data invisible or visible via the Attribute Manager, the scaling of the graph will change to reflect the visible data range.  As this may not be desirable, the padlock (lock axes) icon on the right hand tool bar can be used to prevent automatic scaling.

A: You have to select an attribute in the Attribute Manager first before selecting any point or polygon to apply. Add a new colour, shape or size combination and hightlight each one so that it appears in the Attribute Manager title bar. When an attribute manager combination is ready, the Select Point or Select Polygon icon should work.

A: Make sure that the column type for each variable matches the plot type being created e.g. text column types will not plot in box plots.

A: Make sure that all attributes in the 3 tabs (shape, colour, size) are set to visible in the attribute manager.   Also, check that the samples have a valid data entry for all the variables in the plot axes.

A: It is not possible to display a log axis on a plot if the data being plotted contains 0, negative or text values.  When you click on the Log icon and nothing happens check the bottom left hand corner of the status bar and if this is the problem you should see a red message in the bottom left hand corner of the screen which says “Unable of Log zero, negative or text data”.

To replace 0 or negative values in your data use the Validate>Data Doctor utility.

If you hover the stylus over the screen a black point follows the location of the tip and even when this passes over a point the label is displayed but not necessarily all the time.  If you actually place the stylus right on the point and leave it there for a moment it shows the label BUT you have to be right on the point and leave the stylus there for a moment for ioGAS to register the location.

A: Right-mouse click on the individual plot and select Properties.  In here you can change the plot or axes labels, axis ranges, plot background colour and more.  Note that it is not currently possible to save these changes to the ioGAS file.

A: Yes.  Make one window the active window and then go to Windows>Remember Window Size.  This will hold the current window size in memory so if you then select another window and choose Windows>Restore Window Size this will re-size the active window to the stored dimensions.

A: A transformation that is trying to estimate a value for lambda to de-skew data into a more normal distribution. See Power Transformation for more information.

A: The first variable in the list is used as the X axis and all of the other variables are then plotted against it in the XY scatterplot graphs.   This behaviour does not apply to scatterplot matrix diagrams or map views.

A: If you created the plot with the XY scatterplot icon, use the YX scatterplot icon.  The capital represents the axis on which the first variable in the variable select dialog will be placed.

A. Use the Copy Entire Window at High Resolution window button at the bottom of the Right-Hand toolbar.  This will copy the entire window as a bitmap image to the Clip Board which you can then paste into an image processing program (eg. Paint or Irfanview, Paint Shop Pro, etc) and then print to your plotter from here.

A: Yes.  Before creating the scatterplot matrix go the Window menu and select Scrolling Window.  Make the scatterplot as usual and there will now be up/down and left/right scrollbars available to scroll around the plot and the individual plots should be displayed at a higher resolution.

A: The only way to modify these very long labels at present is to either click on an individual plot and choose Properties and modify the name in here or to do it for each column in the Column Properties dialog prior to creating the scatterplot matrix.

A: ioGAS has a number of summary tools available.  Both parametric and ranked based statistics can be plotted per colour attribute group.  The samples points can be hidden to make viewing these summary statistics easier.

A: Make sure the column is correctly aliased in the Column Properties dialog.  Spider transformations rely on aliasing, in order to correctly identify elements and their units.

A: Use the Copy button on the Right Hand Side toolbar when the Spider Plot window is opened to copy to clipboard and then paste into WordPad, NotePad, etc.

A; Yes. See Create Spider Plot for more information.

A: To switch from displaying solid mean data to all data in a spiderplot use the second icon down on the RHS toolbar called “Change visibility of data points”.  If your dataset has a large number of rows ioGAS automatically displays the spiderplot using the data means as it difficult to view the individual samples when there are a lot of them.  If you don’t want to display the mean data lines on top of the individual data rows then click on the “Change Parametric Statistical Summary” icon a couple of times to remove them from view (3rd icon on RHS toolbar).  To summarise: the 2nd icon down turns individual data points on and off, the 3rd icon down cycles through showing Solid Means, Solid Mean +/- 1 sigma or no mean lines.  The 4th icon down showing Percentile summaries works in the same way.  Sometimes you need to play around with each icon to see exactly what it does and click on it a few times to see the changes and how they work together.

A: The data groups which are used to display the mean lines are taken from the colour attributes only.  It is only when the individual data rows are displayed on the Spiderplot that you can see the colour/shape/size attribute for each data point.

A: The pie chart plots the colour attributes that are set in the Attribute Manager.  Create colour attributes using manually selected groups or automatically assigned from text or numerical variables.

A: N-Score and probability are the same.  The n scores are the z scores from a standard normal distribution ie. mean 0 and sd 1 (hence n score, not z score).  Data is plotted against the n scores from that distribution.  If you picture the bell curve, these are the numbers on the x axis in units of sd.  If you replaced these by the area under the standard normal curve they would be probabilities, so, an n score of 0 (middle) would have an area to the left of 0.5 so a probability of 0.5.  An n score of 3 would have a probability of 0.99 or so.  To view Probability values on the X axis click on the Change X ticks button on the RHS toolbar.

A: You need to attribute the different populations first and then view them using the Statistics tool. Open the Attribute Manager and add a colour attribute.  Select this colour attribute and then go back to the Probability plot window.  Use the Select Attribute Polygon from RHS toolbar to draw a polygon around a population.  Repeat this process for any other populations and then select Analysis>Display Summary Statistics.  Scroll down to see statistics by each colour population group.

A: A split probability plot subdivides the data according to the colour attribute groups, and plots a normal probability plot for each group for the selected variables, on the same diagram (with the respective colour from the attribute dialog).  This allows quick comparison of distributions of subtypes in the data e.g. soil versus stream sediment, or drill hole 1 data versus drill hole 2 data.  If a group has a normally distributed sample population, then they will form a straight line.

A: The histogram chart uses the current colour attributes to subdivide the data.  This allows quick visualisation of the relative contributions by different subgroups to the overall sample count.  The stacked mode merely displays the coloured bars on top of each other, and thus the totals for each bin would be the same as for a histogram without colour groups (ie only ‘default’ set in the colour attribute dialog).  The layered view plots each group 1 behind the other, with the colours made semi-transparent, and is generally only useful for 2 or 3 groups.  The number of bins can be modified using the up and down arrow icons, while individual colour bins or the entire bar can be selected for attributing using the top two icons.

A: Parallel coordinates plot is a technique for representing high-dimensional data.

To show a set of points in an n-dimensional space, onto a 2D surface (ie. the computer screen), the graph is drawn consisting of n vertical, equally spaced parallel line segments.  The lines themselves are not visible in ioGAS, but have the sample points plotted as dots onto them, according to that sample’s value in that variable.  The number of vertical lines depends on the number of variables selected in the Select Variables Dialog.  Then the sample’s points on the various vertical lines are linked with a polyline.

Part of the value of parallel coordinates is that certain geometrical properties in high dimensions translate into easily seen 2D properties.  For example, a set of points that lie on a line in n-space will translate to a set of polylines in parallel coordinates that all intersect at a common point; two sets of points which occupy distinct spatial clusters will form ‘knots’ of lines that don’t intersect.

Selecting more variables and creating another PC plot is equivalent to adding more dimensions to the parallel coordinate plot.

A: ioGAS has a number of summary tools available.  Both parametric and ranked based statistics can be plotted per colour attribute group.  The sample points can be hidden to make viewing these summary statistics easier. To see the various tools available and how they work click here.

A. Hover cursor over main box and view in tooltip.  Copy all Box Plot statistics to text editor such as Word or NotePad using the Copy button on the RHS toolbar.

A: Yes, use the Point Attributing On/Off button on the RHS toolbar.

A: If you are using Drillholes for example to display on your stacked line plots the order in which they appear in the line plot tool is the same order they are appear in the original data file.  If you want to change the order then you will need to modify the original data file and re-import it into ioGAS.

A: In the Column Properties dialog make sure that the numeric variables in your dataset are aliased and have a green dot next to them.  Click on the Select Mineral Groups icon on the RHS (Right-Hand Side) Toolbar in an open plot window and make sure there is at least one mineral composition checked to display.  Use the Show/Hide Mineral Compositions icon to display the minerals in the plot window.

A: The chemical composition of each of these minerals is as follows:

Chlorite 1 = Mg5Al2Si3O10(OH)8

Chlorite 2 = Mg6AlSi3O10(OH)8

Chlorite 3 = Fe2.5Mg2.5Al2Si3O10(OH)8

In ioGAS version 4.5, the composition of each of these minerals is displayed when you hover your mouse over the mineral name in the selection window.

Alternatively, to find out what the chemical composition is for these and other minerals displayed in a plot window click on the Show/Hide Mineral Compositions button on the RHS toolbar and it will cycle through displaying abbreviated mineral name, full mineral name and chemical formula for each node.

A: It is possible to create a density plot for the attribute groups separately if you turn the visibility of all the other groups off in the Attribute Manager.

A: The recommended way of dealing with zeros in ioGAS is to use the Validate>Data Doctor tool which has a range of options for how to treat zero, negative and other ‘special’ values.  Then all the plots and statistics are ‘clean’.

A: Plots with all values >0 can be logged by using the log button on the right hand side toolbar (including data density plots).

It is not possible to embed the legend into a plot window but you can see the legend in a separate window by clicking on the blue circle icon on the main toolbar.

You can either just use the zoom tools on the RHS toolbar and zoom in on your cluster. The 4^th, 5^th and 6^th icons can all be used to achieve this.

If you want to specify a range to display you can right-mouse click on the plot and choose Properties. Under the  Plot tab you can set a minimum and maximum axis range here.

It is not possible to set a default font at this stage. It is possible to change individual plot font, size, etc using the Graph Properties option from the right-mouse click pop-up menu for individual plots.

If you hover over the line in the plot it gives you the equation in a tooltip.   You can’t automatically add it to the plot.  If you use the regression tool (from the Analysis menu) the reports contains the regression equation.

A: In ioGAS version 4.5, outlier points in Box and Whisker plot can be selected by clicking on the Attribute Polygon button (same button as in scatter plots), then drag a box around the points of interest to extract outlier points.

In version 4.4 and older, it is not possible to select the outlier points directly on the B&W plot, however if you go to ‘analysis>Auto-Attribute Tukey Outliers’, it will run the tukey algorithm and then automatically attribute any outlier data points.

If you click on the “Lock” icon on the plot window RHS toolbar (3^rd one from the bottom) before you make a row invisible it will lock the view and the window will not re-size when you turn the visibility of data on/off. You can then use the “Unlock” icon to go back to the way the plot window normally works which is to zoom to the extents of the visible data.

The algorithm was not changed but the outlier values that we report in the tooltip has changed. In v4.3 we reported the near and far outlier min and max SAMPLE values and in v4.4 we have changed this to report the near and far outlier THRESHOLD values.

Aside from using your drillhole data with any of the standard ioGAS plots and univariate/multivariate analysis tools there are two main tools that are designed specifically to be used with drillhole data. These are the 3D spatial plots  and the Line Plot tool. The 3D spatial plot works just like the Attribute Map but for drillhole data which already has XYZ values for each sample interval in the dataset. You can apply colour/shape/size attributes to the downhole sample intervals and even export the attributed data in 3D DXF format to use in other mining programs.

The other tool which you may find useful for working with drillhole data as well is the Line Plot tool. This enables you to display each of your drillholes in a continuous line plot which can be stacked for easy comparison between holes. It is possible to attribute the line plot data points with other variables as well.

A. Click on the Line Plot icon on the main toolbar. Select the Hole_ID column in your dataset as the grouping column and a depth or Z coordinate column as the continuous variable. Leave the variable format as numeric.

In the next dialog select the drillholes you would like to display and how you would like to display them, eg. stacked on top of each other, tiled, etc.

For a full description of how to use the Line Plot tool and a list of the various Line Plot options click here.

You can make box-plot graphs comparing soil and sediments for the same parameter using the following steps:

 1.            Select the variables you want to look at it the Data>Select Variables window

2.            Use the Colour attribute in the Attribute Manager to colour the samples by sample type – soil and sediment (they will need to be in the same file)

3.            Select Graph>Tukey Box Plots (common Y axis) menu option

A: Unfortunately, at the moment it is not possible to remove the word [Locked] from the axis label when you have the axis locked. Thus the only way to remove the word [Locked] from the axis label of XY graphs is to unlock the axes. Note that this will distort the shape of line and polygon features in XY diagrams.

A: There is an issue with importing vector files into an image editing program in which shapes don’t retain their original form as seen in ioGAS. This was quite apparent when circular shapes are being imported as diamond or square shapes. This only happens when you copy graphs straight from the right-click menu in ioGAS (i.e. Right click>Copy>Copy EMF or Copy EPS) and into an image editing program. By saving the plot as an EPS or EMF format from the right click menu (Right click>Save>Save EPS or Save EMF) and bringing that in to an image editing program, the shapes will now look correct.

A: A spiderplot works by dividing the analytical data with the normalised value specified in the plot’s xml file. A spiderplot xml file consists of a list of elements and the normalisation value for each element. For example, if you want to create a spiderplot that normalises to the following values:

La of 50 ppm, Ce of 100 ppm, Dy of 5 ppm

You will then need to edit the values bracketed by <m> </m> (shown in bold in the text below). The spiderplot will divide by these values to normalise the plot.

<transformation_mx_c name=”test”>

                                <Comment>test</Comment>

                                <Reference>test</Reference>

                                                <element name=”La”  unit=”ppm”>

                                                                <m>50</m>

                                                                <c>0</c>

                                                </element>

                                                <element name=”Ce”  unit=”ppm”>

                                                                <m>100</m>

                                                                <c>0</c>

                                                </element>

                                                <element name=”Dy”  unit=”ppm”>

                                                                <m>5</m>

                                                                <c>0</c>

                                                </element>

                </transformation_mx_c>

For more details on how to set up custom spider plot, please refer to the following guide: http://iogas.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Create-Spider-Plot-Normalisation.pdf

A. Copy all Box Plot statistics to text editor such as Word or NotePad using Copy button on RHS toolbar.

A:  ioGAS can only display up to 2000 data points per group as specified in the Line Plot tool.  If there is a group with greater than this number of data points then the data will not be displayed in the line plot. In older versions than ioGAS 4.4 the limit is 1500.

A. Use the Copy Entire Window at High Resolution window button at the bottom of the RHS toolbar when the scatterplot matrix window is open.  This will copy the entire window as a bitmap image to the Clip Board which you can then paste into an image processing program (eg. Paint or Irfanview, Paint Shop Pro, etc) and then print to your plotter from here.

A:  It sounds like the data limits for the installed ioGAS executable file have been reached.  Although ioGAS could successfully create the SPLOM copying to the clipboard was unable to be completed.  For more memory intensive operations such as creating large SPLOM plots (and in this case copying to clipboard), gridding or even just importing large files it is possible to load up additional ioGAS executable files which enable more machine memory to be utilised.  See Data Limits for more information on how to do this.

A: This is caused by having too many variables selected for the scatterplot matrix, thus causing ioGAS to try to fit them into a single window. A solution is to reduce the number of variables to display. This would increase the individual plot size.

A: Follow the steps outlined here to add a custom projection to the ioGAS projection library.

A. Make sure that there is at least one numeric variable selected to grid in the Data>Select Variables dialog. Also make sure that there is no other grid opened at the same time, as you can only make one grid at a time.

A: Make sure you have set the correct columns for North and East in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  ioGAS requires spatial data in order to know the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ of an XYZ grid.

A: Make sure you have set the correct columns for North and East in the Column Properties dialog and that the projection specified is the correct projection for these columns.

Images generated in ioGAS only have projection information if they are exported using the Export Images as Geotiffs icon from the Gridding RHS (Right-Hand Side) toolbar.  Copy/Paste images only contain image information not spatial information.

A: Make sure that points are not set to invisible in the Attribute Manager.  The ioGAS image tool utilises the currently visible data.

A: These numbers refer to the grid cell E and N spatial location, I = Interpolated grid cell value, S = Grid cell with actual data point within it and how many), grid cell value, smr= smoothing radius (how far away the cells have been averaged to generate the cell value).

A: This is the export image file created from a gridded image in ioGAS.  A GeoTIFF image is an image format that also contains spatial information.  GeoTiff images can be opened into GIS software packages such as ArcView or MapInfo in the correct geographical space and also into any standard image processing software where they can be edited or saved into other image formats.

A. Make sure that the columns selected in the Column Properties dialog as East and North are compatible with the projection selected.  Eg. East/North and UTM projections or lat/long and lat/long projections. If the East/North columns are for a projected coordinate system but a lat/long geographic coordinate system (or vice versa) is selected as the Projection then the GeoTiff image cannot be displayed correctly.

A. In version 4.1 this was moved to the Column Properties dialog

A: This is because these GIS programs cannot read the transparency correctly.  If the images are pasted into other programs such as Powerpoint or Word the “No Data” areas will display as transparent.  The No Data colour must be set to transparency within the MapInfo program once the GeoTiff file is imported.  By default the no data cells are changed to white in these GIS programs which may cause a problem if the colour stretch applied to the grid contains white for high values. In this instance we recommend making the “no data” colour one that is not used in the colour ramp, eg. black so that it can be selected in MapInfo or ArcGIS and then made transparent without affecting any “real” data grid cells.

A: Due to memory concerns there are limits on the number of grid cells that can be generated at the one time.  If the number of grid cells is going to exceed the permissible number then not all of the gridded images will be created.  In order to increase the number of grid cells that can generated at a single time try running a higher executable file from the ioGAS installation folder.  To find out more about the other executable files and their limits see Large File Handling and Data Limits.

A: It is not possible to do this at present.

A: If you right-mouse click on a grid and select the Copy option then only the grid is copied to the clipboard as an image.  To copy the legend either right-mouse click on the legend and select Copy and then paste as a separate image or use the Copy button on the main toolbar which will copy the grid window (including the legend) at the screen resolution.

A: This can happen if there are samples set to invisible.  The initial grid produced may be taking the invisible samples into account so try opening up the Grid Options dialog (top icon on RHS toolbar) and then clicking on the Reset Cell Size button and then Apply.  The grid should then be limited to just the visible samples along with a logical grid cell size.

A: Make sure that you are using the Files of Type: Grid Image option in the MapInfo File>Open dialog and not the Raster Image option instead.

It is not currently possible to have a gridded stream image below a soil point map in ioGAS 4.4 but you will be able to in ioGAS 4.5 provided the both types of data are in the same ioGAS file.

A: Yes. This feature was implemented in ioGAS version 4.4. The Grid menu option (Accessed from Map>Grid or Display Grid Options in the RHS toolbar when a grid is already opened) has a new check box the bottom of the window (Extend grid by search radius). When this check box is ticked, the gridding routine will add extra cells around the existing boundary of the grid. The number of cells is defined in the Search Radius drop down menu in the Grid Option window (Search Radius (Cells)).

This was a problem that was fixed in ioGAS version 4.5. When you extend grid by search radius in grid image, the projected image should now be displayed correctly.

A: This is an issue that we identified as a bug in 4.5. The GeoTiff export function only export the Grid based on the settings that were defined prior to grid creation. Unless you set these changes at the start, you can’t see the changes you make to the grid settings when you export.

This has been fixed in ioGAS 4.5.1 (Build 102635)

A: We made some changes to the gridding tool in ioGAS 4.5 and as a result if any older 4.4 or earlier GAS files were saved with open grid windows in them they won’t be able to be opened in ioGAS 4.5.

 What you can do is install ioGAS 4.4 to another location on your computer and use this to open the GAS file up and close the grid window and then re-save. After you do this you should be able to open up the GAS file with all of your other saved plots into ioGAS 4.5.

A: The histogram chart uses the current colour attributes to subdivide the data.  This allows quick visualisation of the relative contributions by different subgroups to the overall sample count.  The stacked mode merely displays the coloured bars on top of each other, and thus the totals for each bin would be the same as for a histogram without colour groups (ie only ‘default’ set in the colour attribute dialog).  The layered view plots each group 1 behind the other, with the colours made semi-transparent, and is generally only useful for 2 or 3 groups.  The number of bins can be modified using the up and down arrow icons, while individual colour bins or the entire bar can be selected for attributing using the top two icons.

A: ioGAS 4.3 can read raw data files exported from Olympus Innov-X XRF units so upgrade to this version or later if possible. If you are running an earlier ioGAS version then the data will need to be copied into a template in order for it to be used with the ioGAS detection limit calculation tool.  Contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net for a copy of the template required.

A: This needs to be set on the XRF unit prior to taking XRF measurements.

On Olympus/Innov-X XRF units by default the XRF is setup to NOT to show chemistry determined to be below LOD in the raw export.  This is a feature on the device that uses a statistical calculation (set at 3sd) to determine whether or not the analyser is effectively seeing an element.  By default this is turned ON, so the export will contain “<LOD” for anything that reports below detection.  There is now a setting in the Results Management which allows this <LOD feature to be turned off, so that the raw error data can be investigated (and used for DL determination), in the same way as the Omega Xplorer Format on the Trimble (in ArcPAD).  All error data is reported as 1sd when this option is enabled.  This can be found by navigating to the Setup TAB > Results Management > Custom TAB (password = z) > Set Chemistry > Show Chem below LOD check box.

Contact us for updated details for later XRF models.

It means that there are entries in the Mode column which are blank/null or a text string which is not recognised by the program.  To fix open the data file and remove any entries that are null or other text such as Calcheck, Standard, etc. and import the file again.

The import tool can only read Olympus/Innov-X data files which have been captured in either Soil mode or Mining mode.  This is generally designated by either an “S” for soil or “M” for mining.  This error message means that there is an entry in the Mode column which is not one of these (and may be even a null/blank entry) and this must be fixed or removed before the data can be imported into ioGAS.  Other modes, such as Two Beam Mining, etc. should still import OK provided that all the entries in the Mode are the same.

A: Make sure the export is exactly the same as the files produced from the XRF instrument.  For example, if the data is collected in Olympus Innov-X data format then it will need to adhere to the following:

          ·       The database XRF export file type must be in CSV format

          ·       Only one unique entry can be present in the MODE column, ie. Don’t mix Soil, Mining, Two Beam Mining, Standards, etc in same export file

          ·        FIELD_1 is matched to the ID column in ioGAS so use this for SampleNo

          ·       WGS84_LAT/WGS84_LONG are matched to the WGS84Latitude and WGS84Longitude columns and used for Google Earth exports in ioGAS

          ·       USER_X/USER_Y/USER_Z are matched to the East, North and Elevation columns and used to display data in the ioGAS spatial plots

          ·       Element and error columns must be in format of NA_DATA, NA_ERROR, etc

          ·       All element and error columns must be present in the export file even if they are unpopulated. Upon import only those with values will be brought into ioGAS.

          ·       Any of the other fields you wish to include will also be imported just as they are

A: If large numbers of samples are being displayed and there are large numbers of plot windows open then performance may suffer.  Using the ‘tabbed windows’ option in the Window menu will improve performance. Try to close or minimise anyplots that are no longer being used. Examining small subsets of the data using the visibility toggles in the attribute manager will also greatly improve performance.

Try using one of the higher executable files found in the installation folder.  As users have computers of different memory capacities, ioGAS has developed a number of additional executable files which are designed to utilise more memory on computers with more RAM.  For example, the default ioGAS 32-bit installation executable file (ioGAS.exe) is designed for computers running 1Gb of RAM.  For users who are running 2Gb RAM computers and are having trouble opening or importing large files try running the ioGAS3.exe file or even the ioGAS4.exe file located in the program installation folder.  The 64-bit installation contains even higher exe files to utlitize up to 4 and 6 Gb of RAM respectively.  Each executable file has data limits based on the number of data cells that be opened (rows x columns), the number of cells that can be gridded or the number of points that can be displayed on a Scatter Plot Matrix (SPLOM).  See Data Limits for more information on these limits and how to use the additional executable files.

A: This has been known to happen with the XP operating system. As a workaround download TweakUI powertools from the Microsoft downloads site and set the general, focus option: “Prevent applications from stealing focus” to ON by checking the box, then pick the appropriate flash taskbar behaviour (eg. flash until click).

A: The technical specifications are available in this document.

ioGAS is not compatible with Windows Mobile operating systems.

The program can be installed on smaller screen PC’s such as Toughbooks and Trimble Yuma units which are running Windows XP/Windows 7 operating systems.

A: In ioGAS version 4.5, ioGAS can be run by users with non-administrator login permissions. User configuration and licensing files, along with a log.txt file, are now under the following file location: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS

In version 4.4 and older, we recommend installing ioGAS under an Administrator log-in.  Users need to have read/write permission to the ..\\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS folder or ..\\Program Files (x86)\ioAnalytics\ioGAS folder as there are a number of configuration and temporary files which are updated in here along with a log.txt file which is used for reference if there is a problem.

A: The installation has not fully downloaded from the website.  Download the software again and make sure it has completely downloaded before starting the installation.

A: ioGAS version 4.5 is Windows 7 certified, which means the software has passed Microsoft designed tests for compatibility and reliability with Windows 7.

 In version 4.4 and older, the program is not Windows 7 Certified however it will run and there are no known incompatibility issues apart from in v4.1 where users will find that there are invisible buttons in the File>Open and File>Export dialogs. It is still possible to use these buttons they are just not visible.

A: This dialog appears when an older program is run in this version of Windows.  For ioGAS click on the “This program installed correctly” option. See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Program-Compatibility-Assistant-frequently-asked-questions for more information.

A: In version 4.4 and older, this means that the program does not have a valid Windows 7 digital signature and is not unusual for older programs which are not yet Windows 7 certified.  ioGAS is a legitimate program which does not yet have a digital signature.  To prevent this dialog from appearing everytime the program is started change your User Account Control (UAC) settings. See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/Windows7/What-is-User-Account-Control for more information.

In ioGAS version 4.5, ioGAS is Windows 7 certified, which means this message should not appear anymore when you start the program.

A: In v4.3 and later there is a separate Windows 7 64-bit installer available which can utilize greater amounts of memory to open large data files.

A. This is generally caused by some of the URL sites required to run ioGAS being blocked by a firewall. Here is the list of URLs that ioGAS may use (the ones in bold are the more important ones).

Diagrams:

http://diagramzip_4_2.iogas.ioanalytics.net

Application:

http://ioGAS.download.ioAnalytics.net

http://ioGAS.forum.eng.ioAnalytics.net

http://ioGAS.help.eng.ioAnalytics.net

http://startlog.eng.ioAnalytics.net

http://ioGAS.versions.eng.ioAnalytics.net

http://ioGAS.plugins.eng.ioAnalytics.net

Some of these links may forward to other servers.  The best thing to do is to pass this list onto the IT dept and get them to unblock them.

A: This message is sometimes caused by insufficient memory being made available by Windows to java/ioGAS.  A workaround for this is to start C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS\ioGAS1.exe which is built to request less memory.

A: This happens when running ioGAS v4.1 on Windows 7 operating system. If you are eligible to upgrade to version 4.2.1 then the problem should be resolved.  The icons are not missing they are just invisible so if you can only run v4.1 or earlier then you can still use the icons by clicking in the space where they should be.

Try downloading and installing the 64-bit version of Java from the following webpage:

 http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

 Once installed, try starting ioGAS again and this should fix the problem.

In ioGAS Mac installation version 4.5, we have made a script file (which you can edit as a text file), that can be executed to run ioGAS with higher memory limits. This file is called run.sh and is located in the ioGAS directory (Applications/ioGAS.app/Contents/Resources/app/ ).

Before you do the following, make sure that you have both Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and the Java Development Kit (JDK) installed. When you have both installed, go to the Java Preferences tool (From Utilities > Java Preferences). Then drag the Java SE 7 line to the top of the list so that it will be the first version that the Mac will use. Just to make sure, disable all the other Java SE -if you had Java SE 6 prior to this, there will be 2 Java SE 6 on that list, 32- and 64-bit versions.

You can edit the values in the run.sh file to follow the values as set out in the higher executable files found in the Windows ioGAS installation. For example, ioGAS4.exe file can load 32,000,000 data cells, 64,000,000 gridding cells and 60,000,000 splom points. We can type these values in the run.sh file, by editing the numbers after –gridcells, -splompoints and –importcells. Make sure you save the run.sh file afterwards.

The run.sh file is executed from Terminal, which can be accessed by going to Applications > Utilities menu. Alternatively, go to Finder and search for Terminal. In Terminal, type in the folowing line:

cd /Applications/ioGAS.app/Contents/Resources/app/

This will take you to the directory where run.sh is located. Then you have to type in the following command to change permission to the run.sh, and to execute the file itself.

chmod +x run.sh

Then type the following command to run the file.

./run.sh

Now ioGAS will run with the specified memory limits.

This is an error that commonly appears in 32-bit system, when a higher-executable file is run (e.g. ioGAS3, ioGAS4) and Java can’t get enough memory. One solution is to use a lower executable file found in the installation area.

A: If you are using Windows operating system, the following shortcuts can be used:

CTRL-C: Copy selected open plot window or copy selected text (for example, from the Summary Statistics window)

CTRL-V: Open Select Variables window

CTRL-A: Brings up attribute map or select all cells in a window with tables (for example, Summary Statistics and View Data)

A: It is likely that the slow start affecting ioGAS can be caused by certain anti-virus software. A workaround is to remove ioGAS from the list of scanned programs in the software.

a. Yes. The ioGAS-GOCAD link is an add-on for ioGAS and by ioAnalytics and the GOCAD Mining Suite developed by Mira Geoscience. A new ioGAS licence and a new GOCAD Mining Suite licence will need to be issued with this option enabled in order for users to access the link from both programs.

 Contact us for more details on pricing and licensing.

A. Yes. Both ioGAS and GOCAD Mining Suite are available in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

A. Make sure you are running ioGAS version 4.4 or later.

A. Yes, provided you have purchased the ioGAS-GOCAD add-on link from both ioAnalytics and MIRA Geocscience.

1. Start ioGAS but do not load any data.

2. Start GOCAD.

3. Connect GOCAD to ioGAS.

4. Use the ioGAS File>Open GOCAD Link Data to bring the data into ioGAS.

A: This is an issue that we identified as a bug in 4.5. The GeoTiff export function only export the Grid based on the settings that were defined prior to grid creation. Unless you set these changes at the start, you can’t see the changes you make to the grid settings when you export.

This has been fixed in ioGAS 4.5.1 (Build 102635)

A: We made some changes to the gridding tool in ioGAS 4.5 and as a result if any older 4.4 or earlier GAS files were saved with open grid windows in them they won’t be able to be opened in ioGAS 4.5.

 What you can do is install ioGAS 4.4 to another location on your computer and use this to open the GAS file up and close the grid window and then re-save. After you do this you should be able to open up the GAS file with all of your other saved plots into ioGAS 4.5.

This is a known issue in the Mac version of 4.5 and has been fixed in ioGAS 4.5.1 (build 102635).

A: This is a problem that we have identified in ioGAS 4.5. This problem appears when your firewall settings are blocking ioGAS access to the new diagrams. When loading up ioGAS 4.5 for the first time, clicking Yes on the ioGAS 64-dialogue message which says “Diagram/Calculation/Spiderplot Updates” will require you to restart ioGAS to see the changes taking effect.

If you cannot see the splash screen for the diagram/calculation/spiderplot updates, please contact us for more information.

A: Go to Help>About menu option and view the Major Version, Build and Status information.

A: Go to the Help>About mneu option and view the licensed days remaining. For single-seat users the licensed days will be a very large number as these licences are perpetual (ie. do not expire). The maintenance days remaining indicates the number of days until the maintenance on the licence will expire. The licence will continue to work after the maintenance period has expired but the software cannot be upgraded or technical support provided.

Note for users connecting to a server licence – the licensed/maintenance days remaining will relate to the 12 week temporary licence file that is updated each time a connection to the server is made. This means the maximum days remaining for a server licence user can be 84 and if a connection has not be made for a while then the days remaining might be much less than this.

A: To purchase ioGAS contact iogas@ioglobal.net  and request an order form.

A: If the maintenance period on a single-seat licence has expired you may continue to use your current version of ioGAS for ever but will no longer be able to receive any software upgrades or technical support.  The first 12 months maintenance is included in the purchase price and we shall notify you before the maintenance is due to expire to see if you wish to continue to keep your ioGAS licence in maintenance for a fee. For more information about renewing maintenance please contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net

A: Check the following:

1.  The copied licence file is named correctly. When copying the licence file attachment from some public email providers the “.” may be replaced with “_” and the licence file will not be recognised. Eg. gas.single.glc is the correct name.
2. In ioGAS version 4.5, make sure you are copying the license file (gas.single.glc) to the following directory: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS
3. In ioGAS version 4.4 and older, you need to have permission to write to the installation folder. The easiest way to do this is to right-mouse click in the installation folder (default C:\Program Files\ioAnalytics\ioGAS) in Windows Explorer and create and save a new text file. If you can’t do this then don’t have write permissions for this folder which you must have in order to run ioGAS.
4. In ioGAS version 4.4 and older, if you are running Microsoft Windows 7 it is not possible to save the licence file attachment from an email directly into the installation folder so although it may look like the file is there it has a lock on it which is preventing it from being read by ioGAS. Copy the licence file to another location on your computer first (eg. desktop or Temp directory) and then paste it into the installation folder.

A. Every computer has a unique Machine ID.  An ioGAS single-seat licence is locked to this Machine ID which means that the software can only be run on this computer.  The error message indicates that the Machine ID in the licence file does not match the computer Machine ID on which the software is installed.  Please contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net for assistance.

A: When an ioGAS software licence is “in maintenance” the latest version of the software can be installed. If the maintenance period has expired then the licence file can only run with any version of the software released before the maintenance expiry date.  If this message appears it means that a later version of the ioGAS software is installed than the version you are permitted to run with the existing licence file.

If you want to run the ioGAS software then you will need to either pay any outstanding maintenance fees so that you can load up the lastest version of the software and receive technical support or re-install an earlier version of the software that is compatible with your existing licence file.  For more information about renewing maintenance please contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net.

A: ioGAS cannot detect a valid licence in the expected location and the two week trial period has ended.

For users who can connect to an ioGAS server licence within their organisation click YES and enter the connection details into the next dialog. Re-start ioGAS for the connection details to be recognised by ioGAS.

If you have purchased ioGAS then make sure that the licence file has been copied to the correct location in the installation folders as outlined in the licence file email.

Users who have purchased the software and require a valid licence file must click NO and then copy and paste the Machine ID listed in the next window into an email and send to ioGAS.licence@ioAnalytics.net.  Once the licence file is issued, copy it to the location outlined in the accompanying email and then re-start ioGAS.

A: Users running academic or fixed-term licences (eg. Extended Evaluation, Server Stand-Alone) will receive this message when the licence expiry date has passed and ioGAS is started.  If your organisation is running a server licence which has been renewed select YES and enter in the connection details. Re-start ioGAS for the details to be recognised by ioGAS.  Users needing to purchase the software or renew their licences please contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net.

A: Check with your IT or ioGAS Admin person within your organisation that the server licence file is installed in the correct location and has not reached the expiry date.  Ensure that the date/time on the host machine is set correctly. Check also that the details entered in the Help>Server Licence Configuration dialog within the ioGAS software on the user machine is correct.  If the server licence is in place and is valid and connection details are correct restart ioGAS.  If the problem still persists the IT people should try stopping and starting the ioAnalytics Service on the host server.  Contact us if you require instructions on how to do this.

A: Clients who are connected to an ioGAS server licence are issued a temporary 12 week (version 4.3 or later) licence each time the machine connects to the server while ioGAS is running.  This temporary licence enables users to travel for up to 12 weeks before they need to reconnect to the server licence again to update the temporary licence file for a further 12 weeks.  Clients can continue to update their temporary licence until such time as the server licence reaches the expiry date.  If a server connection is not made within weeks then the software will cease to run on that computer and the licence will become available on the server for another user if they connect at this time.

A. The server licence software has been installed on the user computer instead of the ioGAS application software.  Un-install the ioGAS Server Licence software from the computer and the message will no longer display. Download and install the ioGAS, ioGAS 64-bit or ioGAS MAC software instead.

It is not possible to transfer a single-seat licence to another computer without contacting us. Single-seat licences are “locked” to a unique Machine ID number so licence files will not work on other computers. Licence transfers are generally required in the event of hardware malfunction, new computer purchases or permanent personnel changes. Please contact us ioGAS.Licence@ioAnalytics.net for more information.

Single-seat ioGAS maintenance includes software upgrades, email technical support, access to training videos and plug-ins and classification/Calculation/Spiderplot library updates.

Organisations running an ioGAS server licence are entitled to all of the mainteance features as part of their lease arrangement.

An ioGAS server licence is a lease of the software for 12 months which includes:

• Low price per seat
• Easy Administration
• Software Upgrades
• Technical Support
• Training Videos
• Access to software during field work or travel
• Classification Diagram/Calculation/Spider Plot library updates

The ioGAS server licence enables you to install the software on a designated number of computers. The licences are not shared between users so if you have 5 people who would like to use the software you would purchase a 5-seat server licence. Each user would then install the software and obtain their licence file from the centrally installed server licence software.

The licence file downloaded onto each computer is a 12 week temporary licence file so that users can travel with their laptop during this time. This temporary licence file is updated each time that the computer is connected to the server licence host network for 12 weeks from the current date. The only time a licence may become available to another user is if no connection is made to the server licence network for 12 weeks.

Please contact iogas@ioglobal.net for more information about how the server licensing system works and prices.

No. The ioGAS server licence system is not a check-in/check-out concurrent licensing system. The ioGAS server licence is designed to licence the ioGAS software on a pre-determined number of computers. This means that if an organisation has 10 people who would be wanting to use the ioGAS software they would purchase a 10-seat ioGAS server licence. The cost per seat is kept low and enables multiple licences to be used with minimal administrative input.

Yes. We offer academic server licences to university departments and also 12 month fixed term licences to single academic users. Contact iogas@ioglobal.net for more information and pricing.

Check firewall settings and make sure that the machine has permission to open a TCP/IP socket to connect to the server.

A:  ioGAS can only display up to 2000 data points per group as specified in the Line Plot tool.  If there is a group with greater than this number of data points then the data will not be displayed in the line plot. In older versions than ioGAS 4.4 the limit is 1500.

A: Yes, use the Point Attributing On/Off button on the RHS toolbar.

A: If you are using Drillholes for example to display on your stacked line plots the order in which they appear in the line plot tool is the same order they are appear in the original data file.  If you want to change the order then you will need to modify the original data file and re-import it into ioGAS.

Aside from using your drillhole data with any of the standard ioGAS plots and univariate/multivariate analysis tools there are two main tools that are designed specifically to be used with drillhole data. These are the 3D spatial plots  and the Line Plot tool. The 3D spatial plot works just like the Attribute Map but for drillhole data which already has XYZ values for each sample interval in the dataset. You can apply colour/shape/size attributes to the downhole sample intervals and even export the attributed data in 3D DXF format to use in other mining programs.

The other tool which you may find useful for working with drillhole data as well is the Line Plot tool. This enables you to display each of your drillholes in a continuous line plot which can be stacked for easy comparison between holes. It is possible to attribute the line plot data points with other variables as well.

A. Click on the Line Plot icon on the main toolbar. Select the Hole_ID column in your dataset as the grouping column and a depth or Z coordinate column as the continuous variable. Leave the variable format as numeric.

In the next dialog select the drillholes you would like to display and how you would like to display them, eg. stacked on top of each other, tiled, etc.

For a full description of how to use the Line Plot tool and a list of the various Line Plot options click here.

A: Follow the steps outlined here to add a custom projection to the ioGAS projection library.

A. Make sure that there is at least one numeric variable selected to grid in the Data>Select Variables dialog. Also make sure that there is no other grid opened at the same time, as you can only make one grid at a time.

A: Make sure you have set the correct columns for North and East in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  ioGAS requires spatial data in order to know the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ of an XYZ grid.

A: Make sure you have set the correct columns for North and East in the Column Properties dialog and that the projection specified is the correct projection for these columns.

Images generated in ioGAS only have projection information if they are exported using the Export Images as Geotiffs icon from the Gridding RHS (Right-Hand Side) toolbar.  Copy/Paste images only contain image information not spatial information.

A: Make sure that points are not set to invisible in the Attribute Manager.  The ioGAS image tool utilises the currently visible data.

A: These numbers refer to the grid cell E and N spatial location, I = Interpolated grid cell value, S = Grid cell with actual data point within it and how many), grid cell value, smr= smoothing radius (how far away the cells have been averaged to generate the cell value).

A: This is the export image file created from a gridded image in ioGAS.  A GeoTIFF image is an image format that also contains spatial information.  GeoTiff images can be opened into GIS software packages such as ArcView or MapInfo in the correct geographical space and also into any standard image processing software where they can be edited or saved into other image formats.

A. Make sure that the columns selected in the Column Properties dialog as East and North are compatible with the projection selected.  Eg. East/North and UTM projections or lat/long and lat/long projections. If the East/North columns are for a projected coordinate system but a lat/long geographic coordinate system (or vice versa) is selected as the Projection then the GeoTiff image cannot be displayed correctly.

A. In version 4.1 this was moved to the Column Properties dialog

A: This is because these GIS programs cannot read the transparency correctly.  If the images are pasted into other programs such as Powerpoint or Word the “No Data” areas will display as transparent.  The No Data colour must be set to transparency within the MapInfo program once the GeoTiff file is imported.  By default the no data cells are changed to white in these GIS programs which may cause a problem if the colour stretch applied to the grid contains white for high values. In this instance we recommend making the “no data” colour one that is not used in the colour ramp, eg. black so that it can be selected in MapInfo or ArcGIS and then made transparent without affecting any “real” data grid cells.

A: Due to memory concerns there are limits on the number of grid cells that can be generated at the one time.  If the number of grid cells is going to exceed the permissible number then not all of the gridded images will be created.  In order to increase the number of grid cells that can generated at a single time try running a higher executable file from the ioGAS installation folder.  To find out more about the other executable files and their limits see Large File Handling and Data Limits.

A: It is not possible to do this at present.

A: If you right-mouse click on a grid and select the Copy option then only the grid is copied to the clipboard as an image.  To copy the legend either right-mouse click on the legend and select Copy and then paste as a separate image or use the Copy button on the main toolbar which will copy the grid window (including the legend) at the screen resolution.

A: This can happen if there are samples set to invisible.  The initial grid produced may be taking the invisible samples into account so try opening up the Grid Options dialog (top icon on RHS toolbar) and then clicking on the Reset Cell Size button and then Apply.  The grid should then be limited to just the visible samples along with a logical grid cell size.

A: Make sure that you are using the Files of Type: Grid Image option in the MapInfo File>Open dialog and not the Raster Image option instead.

It is not currently possible to have a gridded stream image below a soil point map in ioGAS 4.4 but you will be able to in ioGAS 4.5 provided the both types of data are in the same ioGAS file.

A: Yes. This feature was implemented in ioGAS version 4.4. The Grid menu option (Accessed from Map>Grid or Display Grid Options in the RHS toolbar when a grid is already opened) has a new check box the bottom of the window (Extend grid by search radius). When this check box is ticked, the gridding routine will add extra cells around the existing boundary of the grid. The number of cells is defined in the Search Radius drop down menu in the Grid Option window (Search Radius (Cells)).

This was a problem that was fixed in ioGAS version 4.5. When you extend grid by search radius in grid image, the projected image should now be displayed correctly.

A: This is an issue that we identified as a bug in 4.5. The GeoTiff export function only export the Grid based on the settings that were defined prior to grid creation. Unless you set these changes at the start, you can’t see the changes you make to the grid settings when you export.

This has been fixed in ioGAS 4.5.1 (Build 102635)

A: We made some changes to the gridding tool in ioGAS 4.5 and as a result if any older 4.4 or earlier GAS files were saved with open grid windows in them they won’t be able to be opened in ioGAS 4.5.

 What you can do is install ioGAS 4.4 to another location on your computer and use this to open the GAS file up and close the grid window and then re-save. After you do this you should be able to open up the GAS file with all of your other saved plots into ioGAS 4.5.

A: Make sure you have selected North and East column types in the Data>Column Properties dialog

A: The Attribute Map view (or pseudo-map as it is not a true GIS layer) allows the user to see the currently applied attributes (colour/shape/size) for each sample in a spatial (north vs east) view.  Only one map will be displayed.  The Ranked Variable Map view displays a separate map view for each selected variable within the one window.  The element views show ranked values for each variable displayed using a colour ramp and a size ramp that increases from lowest to highest ranked values.

A. You must have lat/long WGS84 coords in the dataset file and make sure they are selected in the Special Column area of the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Make an Attribute Map and while this window is the current (active) window click the Export to Google Earth icon on right-hand toolbar.  This will save the map as .KMZ file that can then be opened into Google Earth.

A: The ranked variable map doesn’t show percentile breaks, just the ranked data values with a colour and size scheme applied so the median value is shown in the centre of the legend for example.

A: For each drillhole you need X, Y and Z coordinates generated for each sample interval prior to importing the data into ioGAS.  In the Data>Column Properties dialog match the X column to the Easting, Y column to Northing and Z column to Elevation. The data is now ready to be displayed in a 3D spatial plot.

A: No.  It is not possible to de-survey drillholes in ioGAS.  This will need to be done outside of ioGAS in another program and then imported.

Users who are running MapInfo/Discover can calculate XYZ coordinates using one the Drillhole menu options when they have a drillhole project open and many other mining software programs will also be able to generate 3D downhole coordinates as well.

A: Try subsetting the drillhole data (ie. turning off a number of drillholes/sample points in the Attribute Manager) to less than 40,000 visible points and then see if the icon becomes active.  If so, open the 3D spatial window and then turn on the visibility for the other data points. There is a data limit set for the number of points that is preventing all of the data being able to be opened into the 3D plot window initially so the workaround is to only open a small number of data points first of all.

The Ranked Variable maps only show the values for a single-element on each plot using a default shape (circle) and with a user-defined colour and/or size ramp. In terms of representing the Attribute Manager it should reflect visibility of samples only.

The Ranked Variable Plots show the data values for each selected variable from smallest to largest (ranked) with a selected colour ramp and size ramp to emphasise higher values as desired.

The Attribute Map on the other hand does have provision to display the values for a variable using a number of different percentile binning ranges or you can create your own custom data ranges. Rather than generating multiple plots like the Ranked Variable Plot menu option does the Attribute Map reflects the data columns used in the Attribute Manager to apply colour/shape/size to each data point in the map using up to three different variables. So to display each sample according to a 5 equal ranges binning range you just need to click on the Colour tab, select a numeric variable from the pull-down list, select a colour ramp and the binning range then click on the Auto-Attribute button. If you would like to size the data points according to the variable values as well then just select the Size tab, the variable column and click on Auto-Attribute so that the data points are both coloured and sized according to their values.

Aside from using your drillhole data with any of the standard ioGAS plots and univariate/multivariate analysis tools there are two main tools that are designed specifically to be used with drillhole data. These are the 3D spatial plots  and the Line Plot tool. The 3D spatial plot works just like the Attribute Map but for drillhole data which already has XYZ values for each sample interval in the dataset. You can apply colour/shape/size attributes to the downhole sample intervals and even export the attributed data in 3D DXF format to use in other mining programs.

The other tool which you may find useful for working with drillhole data as well is the Line Plot tool. This enables you to display each of your drillholes in a continuous line plot which can be stacked for easy comparison between holes. It is possible to attribute the line plot data points with other variables as well.

A: It is not possible to tell ioGAS what zone your data is in. Spatial plots in ioGAS are generated using X vs Y coordinates so they do not have any concept of UTM Zone. If you want to display your data properly in ioGAS you would need to make sure the coordinates all relate to the same zone.

A: Make sure the dataset contains columns for Lat/Long WGS84 and these are set as the columns to use to export for Google Earth in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Google Earth requires spatial data to have this projection.

The ArcGIS export is only available from this 32-bit version of ioGAS as the ArcGIS software is only available in 32-bit. Therefore you will need to install the 32-bit version of ioGAS to access this feature. If you are running 64-bit windows you can install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of ioGAS and licence them both using the same licence file. Server licence users just need to enter the server details into each installation (this is still equivalent to one server licence file).

You must have the ArcGIS program installed on your computer as ioGAS uses your ArcGIS software to generate the gdb and lyr files.

A: The first thing to do is to check the coordinates of the imported data points in Mapinfo. When all of your data points have coordinate values that are outside the range of acceptable values for a UTM zone, it will plot as a single point or as a line in Mapinfo. Then check if the coordinate system you are using in ioGAS is the same one as the one you are using in Mapinfo.

If the solutions outlined above do not work, we have encountered this sort of problem where the language of the operating system (in this case Windows in Portuguese) is not the same as the language used in Mapinfo and ioGAS (both in English). In this situation, the solution was to install Windows English language pack and change the language of the operating system to English when running ioGAS and MapInfo (Go to Control Panel | Region and Language Settings and then add English from Install/uninstall languages…).

A: This is the export image file created from a gridded image in ioGAS.  A GeoTIFF image is an image format that also contains spatial information.  GeoTiff images can be opened into GIS software packages such as ArcView or MapInfo in the correct geographical space and also into any standard image processing software where they can be edited or saved into other image formats.

A. Make sure that the columns selected in the Column Properties dialog as East and North are compatible with the projection selected.  Eg. East/North and UTM projections or lat/long and lat/long projections. If the East/North columns are for a projected coordinate system but a lat/long geographic coordinate system (or vice versa) is selected as the Projection then the GeoTiff image cannot be displayed correctly.

A: This is because these GIS programs cannot read the transparency correctly.  If the images are pasted into other programs such as Powerpoint or Word the “No Data” areas will display as transparent.  The No Data colour must be set to transparency within the MapInfo program once the GeoTiff file is imported.  By default the no data cells are changed to white in these GIS programs which may cause a problem if the colour stretch applied to the grid contains white for high values. In this instance we recommend making the “no data” colour one that is not used in the colour ramp, eg. black so that it can be selected in MapInfo or ArcGIS and then made transparent without affecting any “real” data grid cells.

A: In ioGAS version 4.5, you can export attributed data points to MapInfo TAB file, where it can be read in MapInfo Professional. The legend window is also exported as a separate TAB file. Note that export to MapInfo TAB file format is only available in ioGAS 45 32-bit version.

In version 4.4 and older, the only way you can export data from ioGAS to MapInfo is to use an importer tool. The importer tool is supplied with the Discover software program, a plug-in to MapInfo.  The importer is available in Discover version 8.0 and later.  The tool can be accessed directly from the Discover>Import and Export menu or via the Tool Manager.  Updates can be made in ioGAS and refreshed immediately with MapInfo so long as the file is saved each time.  See ioGAS Importer for MapInfo more information.

A: This is a known bug with the Discover 11.1 patch.  Either upgrade to Discover 12.0 or contact us for updated files to get this utility running with Discover 11.1.

A: MapInfo has a 31 character limit table name restriction.  If an ioGAS filename is over 31 characters then the MapInfo table names will be truncated and not all of them may be generated.  Make sure the ioGAS filename is less than 31 characters before the data is imported into MapInfo.

A: This is a known problem with the MapInfo>Send to PDF utility (version 11) when printing a layout window with a layer that contains symbols from an ET font library such as ET ioGAS Symbols.  As a workaround either print to a different PDF writer or change the symbols to a MapInfo font library.

A: Make sure that you are using the Files of Type: Grid Image option in the MapInfo File>Open dialog and not the Raster Image option instead.

A: This is a bug in the ioGAS Import utility in Discover and is still present in version Version 2011, Release Build 15.  The only workaround at this stage is to manual edit the MapInfo legend table.

A.  ioGAS file contains duplicate column names.  MapInfo does not support non-unique column names.

A: This is a bug in the importer tool in Discover versions 11.0 and 11.01 which is fixed in Discover 2011.  As a workaround either re-type the text into the legend tables or copy the ioGAS legend window and bring it into MapInfo and display as an image.

A: This is a known bug with the MapInfo/Discover 2012.0.1 upgrade. Click here to download a fix for this problem. Unzip the folder and copy the DLL file into the C:\Program Files (x86)\MapInfo\Professional\Discover folder on your computer and re-start.

A: The first thing to do is to check the coordinates of the imported data points in Mapinfo. When all of your data points have coordinate values that are outside the range of acceptable values for a UTM zone, it will plot as a single point or as a line in Mapinfo. Then check if the coordinate system you are using in ioGAS is the same one as the one you are using in Mapinfo.

If the solutions outlined above do not work, we have encountered this sort of problem where the language of the operating system (in this case Windows in Portuguese) is not the same as the language used in Mapinfo and ioGAS (both in English). In this situation, the solution was to install Windows English language pack and change the language of the operating system to English when running ioGAS and MapInfo (Go to Control Panel | Region and Language Settings and then add English from Install/uninstall languages…).

A: The Export to MapInfo TAB format is only available in 32-bit version of ioGAS. Therefore you will need to install the 32-bit version of ioGAS to access this feature. If you are running 64-bit Windows, you can install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of ioGAS and license them both using the same license file. Server license users just need to enter the server details into each installation (this is still equivalent to one server license file).

A: This was an issue identified in MapInfo when you chose to print from the Layout window. What usually happens when the layout window is exported as a PDF file, the shapes appear different to the ones seen in the ioGAS data file (even though colors and sizes appear normal). One solution in MapInfo is to go to File>Print to PDF from a Map or Layout Window with any ET font set displayed and ensure Enhanced Rendering is disabled for the mapper (accessible from Map>Options menu). This will ensure that the shapes as seen in ioGAS will carry on through when exported as a pdf file from MapInfo.

A: It is not possible to import raster images into ioGAS. You will need to export the data points into a format that is readable in 3rd party packages to overlay on top of geology or aeromag image. ioGAS supports export as MapInfo tab file or as an ArcGIS ESRI layer file, which can be read in MapInfo or ArcGIS, respectively.

A: If you have been using a custom projection that was added to the geotiff.epsg.other.txt file then this is a known bug in version 4.5.1. As a work around you can export the MI table as a MUD/MIF file and normally alter the projection in the MIF file. If you are unsure how to do this please contact ioGAS.Support@ioAnalytics.net

A: In the Column Properties dialog make sure that the numeric variables in your dataset are aliased and have a green dot next to them.  Click on the Select Mineral Groups icon on the RHS (Right-Hand Side) Toolbar in an open plot window and make sure there is at least one mineral composition checked to display.  Use the Show/Hide Mineral Compositions icon to display the minerals in the plot window.

A: The chemical composition of each of these minerals is as follows:

Chlorite 1 = Mg5Al2Si3O10(OH)8

Chlorite 2 = Mg6AlSi3O10(OH)8

Chlorite 3 = Fe2.5Mg2.5Al2Si3O10(OH)8

In ioGAS version 4.5, the composition of each of these minerals is displayed when you hover your mouse over the mineral name in the selection window.

Alternatively, to find out what the chemical composition is for these and other minerals displayed in a plot window click on the Show/Hide Mineral Compositions button on the RHS toolbar and it will cycle through displaying abbreviated mineral name, full mineral name and chemical formula for each node.

A:   This means that the amount of memory to open the dataset in its entirety is not available. As users have computers of different memory capacities, ioGAS has developed a number of additional executable files which are designed to utilise more memory on computers with more RAM. For example, the default 32-bit installation executable file is designed for computers running 1Gb of RAM. For users who are running 2Gb RAM computers and are having trouble opening or importing large files try running the ioGAS3.exe file or even the ioGAS4.exe file located in the program installation folder. Each executable file has data limits based on the number of data cells that be opened (rows x columns), the number of cells that can be gridded or the number of points that can be displayed on a Scatter Plot Matrix (SPLOM). The 64-bit version also has a number of executable files to choose from which can utilise up to 6 and 8 Gb RAM respectively. See Large File Handling & Data Limits for more information on these limits and how to use the additional executable files.

A: This message will appear as the rows in the file are actually unequal in length. ie. contain extra commas. The commas may be present in a description field so check that the imported data appears in the correct columns in ioGAS.

A: Check that the file is not in Excel v5.0/95 Workbook format.  ioGAS does not support excel files in this version so save the file as either Excel 97-2003 Workbook (*.xls) or the latest Excel Workbook (*.xlsx) and re-import.

Also make sure that the Excel worksheet you are importing does not contain formulae.  Try copying the data into a new worksheet by left mouse clicking on the top left border cell in the worksheet in Excel to highlight all the columns and rows in the dataset.  Once they are highlighted right mouse click in the top left border cell in the worksheet and select Copy.  Right mouse click again in the top left border cell in the worksheet and select Paste Special.  In the Paste Special dialog select Values. Click OK to paste the values.  The worksheet should now be a flat table that does not contain any formulae.  Re-import this worksheet into ioGAS.

A. This error generally appears when there are international characters in the dataset such as umulats or accents.  This was fixed in ioGAS v3.2.

A: Between ioGAS versions 4.0 and 4.1 improvements were made to the way open plot windows and other parameters are saved to the file.  Unfortunately as a result, files which were saved with open plot windows in version 4.0 cannot be displayed when opened in version 4.1.  The data will open into ioGAS as usual, only the open plot windows will not display.

A: If this is not the issue go to the Windows menu and see if the plot windows are listed at the bottom.  If so, then it is possible that the file was saved with the plot windows minimised.  If the program has been re-sized then the minimised windows may actually be displaying off the screen.  Re-size the screen by making it larger to see if the minimised windows appear at the bottom.  Otherwise open them from the Windows menu.

A: This error generally occurs when Microsoft office 32-bit is installed on a Windows 64-bit operating system machine.  In order for the ODBC database link to work in the 64-bit version of  ioGAS then the 64-bit ODBC drivers need to be installed. This will happen automatically if a 64-bit version of Microsoft Office is installed.  Alternatively, install the 32-bit version of ioGAS (on the 64-bit machine) and the ODBC connection can run with the 32-bit Microsoft Office ODBC drivers.

A:  ioGAS can only display up to 2000 data points per group as specified in the Line Plot tool.  If there is a group with greater than this number of data points then the data will not be displayed in the line plot. In older versions than ioGAS 4.4 the limit is 1500.

A: ioGAS 4.3 can read raw data files exported from Olympus Innov-X XRF units so upgrade to this version or later if possible. If you are running an earlier ioGAS version then the data will need to be copied into a template in order for it to be used with the ioGAS detection limit calculation tool.  Contact ioGAS.support@ioAnalytics.net for a copy of the template required.

A: This needs to be set on the XRF unit prior to taking XRF measurements.

On Olympus/Innov-X XRF units by default the XRF is setup to NOT to show chemistry determined to be below LOD in the raw export.  This is a feature on the device that uses a statistical calculation (set at 3sd) to determine whether or not the analyser is effectively seeing an element.  By default this is turned ON, so the export will contain “<LOD” for anything that reports below detection.  There is now a setting in the Results Management which allows this <LOD feature to be turned off, so that the raw error data can be investigated (and used for DL determination), in the same way as the Omega Xplorer Format on the Trimble (in ArcPAD).  All error data is reported as 1sd when this option is enabled.  This can be found by navigating to the Setup TAB > Results Management > Custom TAB (password = z) > Set Chemistry > Show Chem below LOD check box.

Contact us for updated details for later XRF models.

It means that there are entries in the Mode column which are blank/null or a text string which is not recognised by the program.  To fix open the data file and remove any entries that are null or other text such as Calcheck, Standard, etc. and import the file again.

The import tool can only read Olympus/Innov-X data files which have been captured in either Soil mode or Mining mode.  This is generally designated by either an “S” for soil or “M” for mining.  This error message means that there is an entry in the Mode column which is not one of these (and may be even a null/blank entry) and this must be fixed or removed before the data can be imported into ioGAS.  Other modes, such as Two Beam Mining, etc. should still import OK provided that all the entries in the Mode are the same.

A: Make sure the export is exactly the same as the files produced from the XRF instrument.  For example, if the data is collected in Olympus Innov-X data format then it will need to adhere to the following:

          ·       The database XRF export file type must be in CSV format

          ·       Only one unique entry can be present in the MODE column, ie. Don’t mix Soil, Mining, Two Beam Mining, Standards, etc in same export file

          ·        FIELD_1 is matched to the ID column in ioGAS so use this for SampleNo

          ·       WGS84_LAT/WGS84_LONG are matched to the WGS84Latitude and WGS84Longitude columns and used for Google Earth exports in ioGAS

          ·       USER_X/USER_Y/USER_Z are matched to the East, North and Elevation columns and used to display data in the ioGAS spatial plots

          ·       Element and error columns must be in format of NA_DATA, NA_ERROR, etc

          ·       All element and error columns must be present in the export file even if they are unpopulated. Upon import only those with values will be brought into ioGAS.

          ·       Any of the other fields you wish to include will also be imported just as they are

ioGAS has a column limit of 253. If a file has more columns than this then they will not be imported.

a. Yes. The ioGAS-GOCAD link is an add-on for ioGAS and by ioAnalytics and the GOCAD Mining Suite developed by Mira Geoscience. A new ioGAS licence and a new GOCAD Mining Suite licence will need to be issued with this option enabled in order for users to access the link from both programs.

 Contact us for more details on pricing and licensing.

ioGAS only supports using one dataset at a time. If you had all your data in the one file you could attribute by sample type and only make soils or stream visible or if you are running dual screens you could open up ioGAS twice and work with one dataset in each screen.

A: We made some changes to the gridding tool in ioGAS 4.5 and as a result if any older 4.4 or earlier GAS files were saved with open grid windows in them they won’t be able to be opened in ioGAS 4.5.

 What you can do is install ioGAS 4.4 to another location on your computer and use this to open the GAS file up and close the grid window and then re-save. After you do this you should be able to open up the GAS file with all of your other saved plots into ioGAS 4.5.

A. Yes. Both ioGAS and GOCAD Mining Suite are available in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

A. Make sure you are running ioGAS version 4.4 or later.

A. Yes, provided you have purchased the ioGAS-GOCAD add-on link from both ioAnalytics and MIRA Geocscience.

1. Start ioGAS but do not load any data.

2. Start GOCAD.

3. Connect GOCAD to ioGAS.

4. Use the ioGAS File>Open GOCAD Link Data to bring the data into ioGAS.

A: Parallel coordinates plot is a technique for representing high-dimensional data.

To show a set of points in an n-dimensional space, onto a 2D surface (ie. the computer screen), the graph is drawn consisting of n vertical, equally spaced parallel line segments.  The lines themselves are not visible in ioGAS, but have the sample points plotted as dots onto them, according to that sample’s value in that variable.  The number of vertical lines depends on the number of variables selected in the Select Variables Dialog.  Then the sample’s points on the various vertical lines are linked with a polyline.

Part of the value of parallel coordinates is that certain geometrical properties in high dimensions translate into easily seen 2D properties.  For example, a set of points that lie on a line in n-space will translate to a set of polylines in parallel coordinates that all intersect at a common point; two sets of points which occupy distinct spatial clusters will form ‘knots’ of lines that don’t intersect.

Selecting more variables and creating another PC plot is equivalent to adding more dimensions to the parallel coordinate plot.

A: ioGAS has a number of summary tools available.  Both parametric and ranked based statistics can be plotted per colour attribute group.  The sample points can be hidden to make viewing these summary statistics easier. To see the various tools available and how they work click here.

A: The pie chart plots the colour attributes that are set in the Attribute Manager.  Create colour attributes using manually selected groups or automatically assigned from text or numerical variables.

A: It is possible to create a density plot for the attribute groups separately if you turn the visibility of all the other groups off in the Attribute Manager.

A: The recommended way of dealing with zeros in ioGAS is to use the Validate>Data Doctor tool which has a range of options for how to treat zero, negative and other ‘special’ values.  Then all the plots and statistics are ‘clean’.

A: Plots with all values >0 can be logged by using the log button on the right hand side toolbar (including data density plots).

A. PCA without “robustness” or scaling is a simple technique (what rotation of the data will appear to maximize the variance?) and the answer is unambiguous.  However when scaling is introduced there are many options and most other statistics tools are very complex to use. In ioGAS the only scaling we allow is z-score scaling.

 What is happening is that the data are ‘stretched’ along the principal axes (proportional to SD) before the ‘rotation’ of the PCA.  When data is z-scaled it is a mathematical fact that the covariance matrix (used by PCA) becomes a correlation matrix. We have taken a simple approach as described in the publication Campbell, N.A. 1980.  Robust procedures in multivariate analysis. I: Robust covariance estimation.  Appl. Statist., 29, 231-237.  What is happening here is that ‘outliers’ are down-weighted in the calculations of the covariance matrix (this weighted covariance is fed back into the mahalanobis distance calculation that produces the weights, and this is repeated until convergence).  This results in a final covariance matrix that can be used to perform a PCA (or other things) that “ignores” the outliers.

In version 3.4 step one is to z-scale the data, step two is to compute the robust covariance matrix and step three is to use this matrix for the PCA.  The result of this is a covariance matrix that is not a correlation matrix.  The scaling was described as ‘z scaling’ rather than ‘correlation matrix’ in the robust user interface.  In version 4.0 the processing order was changed so that the robustness algorithm is used to down-weight the outlying data as the first step.  The second step is then to perform a correlation based PCA in the same way as the non-robust case. This is a neater combination of steps and the terms ‘correlation matrix’ and ‘z-scaling’ can be used interchangeably in all cases.

A: This message is mainly in place to prevent users from performing a PCA calculation and then running it again without realising that the Selected Variables dialog has been updated with the  PCA columns from the previous calculation.  Therefore the new PCA calculation would be using the previous PCA columns as the input columns.  Go back into the Select Variables dialog and make sure that the correct variables are selected and then continue.

This message generally indicates that there is a variable in the selection that has zero variance, ie. at detection limit.

A: Yes.  It is possible to print directly from selected plot windows in ioGAS.  Right-mouse click on a plot within a window and select Print from the pop-up menu.  A dialog with standard printing options is displayed to select the Printer, page size and orientation.

A: If you want to print the whole window with multiple graphs in it then you will need to copy the window using the Copy button on the main toolbar at the top of the screen.  This will copy an image to this clipboard which can then be pasted into Word or Powerpoint or an image processing package using Ctrl-V. Print theh image from one of these programs.  If you have a ranked variable map open or a SPLOM use the Copy button the RHS toolbar to copy the window at a higher resolution and then paste into one of the programs outlined above.

A: N-Score and probability are the same.  The n scores are the z scores from a standard normal distribution ie. mean 0 and sd 1 (hence n score, not z score).  Data is plotted against the n scores from that distribution.  If you picture the bell curve, these are the numbers on the x axis in units of sd.  If you replaced these by the area under the standard normal curve they would be probabilities, so, an n score of 0 (middle) would have an area to the left of 0.5 so a probability of 0.5.  An n score of 3 would have a probability of 0.99 or so.  To view Probability values on the X axis click on the Change X ticks button on the RHS toolbar.

A: You need to attribute the different populations first and then view them using the Statistics tool. Open the Attribute Manager and add a colour attribute.  Select this colour attribute and then go back to the Probability plot window.  Use the Select Attribute Polygon from RHS toolbar to draw a polygon around a population.  Repeat this process for any other populations and then select Analysis>Display Summary Statistics.  Scroll down to see statistics by each colour population group.

A: A split probability plot subdivides the data according to the colour attribute groups, and plots a normal probability plot for each group for the selected variables, on the same diagram (with the respective colour from the attribute dialog).  This allows quick comparison of distributions of subtypes in the data e.g. soil versus stream sediment, or drill hole 1 data versus drill hole 2 data.  If a group has a normally distributed sample population, then they will form a straight line.

A: Make sure you have selected North and East column types in the Data>Column Properties dialog

A: The Attribute Map view (or pseudo-map as it is not a true GIS layer) allows the user to see the currently applied attributes (colour/shape/size) for each sample in a spatial (north vs east) view.  Only one map will be displayed.  The Ranked Variable Map view displays a separate map view for each selected variable within the one window.  The element views show ranked values for each variable displayed using a colour ramp and a size ramp that increases from lowest to highest ranked values.

A: The ranked variable map doesn’t show percentile breaks, just the ranked data values with a colour and size scheme applied so the median value is shown in the centre of the legend for example.

A: Make sure the dataset contains columns for Lat/Long WGS84 and these are set as the columns to use to export for Google Earth in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Google Earth requires spatial data to have this projection.

The Ranked Variable maps only show the values for a single-element on each plot using a default shape (circle) and with a user-defined colour and/or size ramp. In terms of representing the Attribute Manager it should reflect visibility of samples only.

The Ranked Variable Plots show the data values for each selected variable from smallest to largest (ranked) with a selected colour ramp and size ramp to emphasise higher values as desired.

The Attribute Map on the other hand does have provision to display the values for a variable using a number of different percentile binning ranges or you can create your own custom data ranges. Rather than generating multiple plots like the Ranked Variable Plot menu option does the Attribute Map reflects the data columns used in the Attribute Manager to apply colour/shape/size to each data point in the map using up to three different variables. So to display each sample according to a 5 equal ranges binning range you just need to click on the Colour tab, select a numeric variable from the pull-down list, select a colour ramp and the binning range then click on the Auto-Attribute button. If you would like to size the data points according to the variable values as well then just select the Size tab, the variable column and click on Auto-Attribute so that the data points are both coloured and sized according to their values.

If you hover over the line in the plot it gives you the equation in a tooltip.   You can’t automatically add it to the plot.  If you use the regression tool (from the Analysis menu) the reports contains the regression equation.

A. You must have lat/long WGS84 coords in the dataset file and make sure they are selected in the Special Column area of the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Make an Attribute Map and while this window is the current (active) window click the Export to Google Earth icon on right-hand toolbar.  This will save the map as .KMZ file that can then be opened into Google Earth.

A: Make sure you have set the correct columns for North and East in the Column Properties dialog and that the projection specified is the correct projection for these columns.

Images generated in ioGAS only have projection information if they are exported using the Export Images as Geotiffs icon from the Gridding RHS (Right-Hand Side) toolbar.  Copy/Paste images only contain image information not spatial information.

A: This is the export image file created from a gridded image in ioGAS.  A GeoTIFF image is an image format that also contains spatial information.  GeoTiff images can be opened into GIS software packages such as ArcView or MapInfo in the correct geographical space and also into any standard image processing software where they can be edited or saved into other image formats.

A. Make sure that the columns selected in the Column Properties dialog as East and North are compatible with the projection selected.  Eg. East/North and UTM projections or lat/long and lat/long projections. If the East/North columns are for a projected coordinate system but a lat/long geographic coordinate system (or vice versa) is selected as the Projection then the GeoTiff image cannot be displayed correctly.

A: This is because these GIS programs cannot read the transparency correctly.  If the images are pasted into other programs such as Powerpoint or Word the “No Data” areas will display as transparent.  The No Data colour must be set to transparency within the MapInfo program once the GeoTiff file is imported.  By default the no data cells are changed to white in these GIS programs which may cause a problem if the colour stretch applied to the grid contains white for high values. In this instance we recommend making the “no data” colour one that is not used in the colour ramp, eg. black so that it can be selected in MapInfo or ArcGIS and then made transparent without affecting any “real” data grid cells.

A: It is not possible to do this at present.

A: In ioGAS version 4.5, you can export attributed data points to MapInfo TAB file, where it can be read in MapInfo Professional. The legend window is also exported as a separate TAB file. Note that export to MapInfo TAB file format is only available in ioGAS 45 32-bit version.

In version 4.4 and older, the only way you can export data from ioGAS to MapInfo is to use an importer tool. The importer tool is supplied with the Discover software program, a plug-in to MapInfo.  The importer is available in Discover version 8.0 and later.  The tool can be accessed directly from the Discover>Import and Export menu or via the Tool Manager.  Updates can be made in ioGAS and refreshed immediately with MapInfo so long as the file is saved each time.  See ioGAS Importer for MapInfo more information.

A: This is a known bug with the Discover 11.1 patch.  Either upgrade to Discover 12.0 or contact us for updated files to get this utility running with Discover 11.1.

A: MapInfo has a 31 character limit table name restriction.  If an ioGAS filename is over 31 characters then the MapInfo table names will be truncated and not all of them may be generated.  Make sure the ioGAS filename is less than 31 characters before the data is imported into MapInfo.

A: This is a known problem with the MapInfo>Send to PDF utility (version 11) when printing a layout window with a layer that contains symbols from an ET font library such as ET ioGAS Symbols.  As a workaround either print to a different PDF writer or change the symbols to a MapInfo font library.

A: Make sure that you are using the Files of Type: Grid Image option in the MapInfo File>Open dialog and not the Raster Image option instead.

A: This is a bug in the ioGAS Import utility in Discover and is still present in version Version 2011, Release Build 15.  The only workaround at this stage is to manual edit the MapInfo legend table.

A.  ioGAS file contains duplicate column names.  MapInfo does not support non-unique column names.

A: This is a bug in the importer tool in Discover versions 11.0 and 11.01 which is fixed in Discover 2011.  As a workaround either re-type the text into the legend tables or copy the ioGAS legend window and bring it into MapInfo and display as an image.

A: Make sure the dataset contains columns for Lat/Long WGS84 and these are set as the columns for Google Earth export in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Google earth requires spatial data to have this projection.  If the wrong projection is used, Google Earth will either produce an error when trying to load the data or will display it in the wrong place.

A: Google Earth reduces point visibility for overlays with many points.  Try zooming in further and see if the data points become visible.  It may also help to make the sizes of the data points larger than 1 or 2 pt, which appear as very small dots in Google Earth.

A: The sample number is stored under the Placemark for each sample otherwise the number would be displayed at all times.  To view the variable value, sample number etc, within Google Earth hold the cursor over the point of interest and left click on it. The values should display in a tooltip.

A: KMZ is the file format used by Google Earth.  If you have Google Earth installed and double click on the *.KMZ file, the data will be automatically loaded into the Google Earth program and zoomed to the imported data location.  Alternatively, open Google Earth and then open the KMZ file from within this program.

A: Make sure the dataset contains columns for Lat/Long WGS84 and these are set as the columns to use to export for Google Earth in the Data>Column Properties dialog.  Google Earth requires spatial data to have this projection.

A. Copy all Box Plot statistics to text editor such as Word or NotePad using Copy button on RHS toolbar.

A. Use the Copy Entire Window at High Resolution window button at the bottom of the RHS toolbar when the scatterplot matrix window is open.  This will copy the entire window as a bitmap image to the Clip Board which you can then paste into an image processing program (eg. Paint or Irfanview, Paint Shop Pro, etc) and then print to your plotter from here.

A:  It sounds like the data limits for the installed ioGAS executable file have been reached.  Although ioGAS could successfully create the SPLOM copying to the clipboard was unable to be completed.  For more memory intensive operations such as creating large SPLOM plots (and in this case copying to clipboard), gridding or even just importing large files it is possible to load up additional ioGAS executable files which enable more machine memory to be utilised.  See Data Limits for more information on how to do this.

A: Yes.  It is possible to print directly from selected plot windows in ioGAS.  Right-mouse click on a plot within a window and select Print from the pop-up menu.  A dialog with standard printing options is displayed to select the Printer, page size and orientation.

A: If you want to print the whole window with multiple graphs in it then you will need to copy the window using the Copy button on the main toolbar at the top of the screen.  This will copy an image to this clipboard which can then be pasted into Word or Powerpoint or an image processing package using Ctrl-V. Print theh image from one of these programs.  If you have a ranked variable map open or a SPLOM use the Copy button the RHS toolbar to copy the window at a higher resolution and then paste into one of the programs outlined above.

The ArcGIS export is only available from this 32-bit version of ioGAS as the ArcGIS software is only available in 32-bit. Therefore you will need to install the 32-bit version of ioGAS to access this feature. If you are running 64-bit windows you can install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of ioGAS and licence them both using the same licence file. Server licence users just need to enter the server details into each installation (this is still equivalent to one server licence file).

You must have the ArcGIS program installed on your computer as ioGAS uses your ArcGIS software to generate the gdb and lyr files.

Turn off the visibility for all the other data points apart from the subset you have highlighted and then select File>Export Visible Rows and select CSV as the Files of type. Enter a filename and choose a location. Use the File>Export Selected Columns menu option if you only want to export selected columns (as displayed in the Select Variables dialog) as well as your visible rows.

A: This is a known bug with the MapInfo/Discover 2012.0.1 upgrade. Click here to download a fix for this problem. Unzip the folder and copy the DLL file into the C:\Program Files (x86)\MapInfo\Professional\Discover folder on your computer and re-start.

A: There is an issue with importing vector files into an image editing program in which shapes don’t retain their original form as seen in ioGAS. This was quite apparent when circular shapes are being imported as diamond or square shapes. This only happens when you copy graphs straight from the right-click menu in ioGAS (i.e. Right click>Copy>Copy EMF or Copy EPS) and into an image editing program. By saving the plot as an EPS or EMF format from the right click menu (Right click>Save>Save EPS or Save EMF) and bringing that in to an image editing program, the shapes will now look correct.

A: It is not possible to import raster images into ioGAS. You will need to export the data points into a format that is readable in 3rd party packages to overlay on top of geology or aeromag image. ioGAS supports export as MapInfo tab file or as an ArcGIS ESRI layer file, which can be read in MapInfo or ArcGIS, respectively.

A: If you have been using a custom projection that was added to the geotiff.epsg.other.txt file then this is a known bug in version 4.5.1. As a work around you can export the MI table as a MUD/MIF file and normally alter the projection in the MIF file. If you are unsure how to do this please contact ioGAS.Support@ioAnalytics.net

A: As this is a Windows-only feature, it is not possible to export to a MapInfo tab file in the Mac version of ioGAS 4.5. Export to ArcGIS format is also not possible.

A: The first thing to do is to check the coordinates of the imported data points in Mapinfo. When all of your data points have coordinate values that are outside the range of acceptable values for a UTM zone, it will plot as a single point or as a line in Mapinfo. Then check if the coordinate system you are using in ioGAS is the same one as the one you are using in Mapinfo.

If the solutions outlined above do not work, we have encountered this sort of problem where the language of the operating system (in this case Windows in Portuguese) is not the same as the language used in Mapinfo and ioGAS (both in English). In this situation, the solution was to install Windows English language pack and change the language of the operating system to English when running ioGAS and MapInfo (Go to Control Panel | Region and Language Settings and then add English from Install/uninstall languages…).

A: The Export to MapInfo TAB format is only available in 32-bit version of ioGAS. Therefore you will need to install the 32-bit version of ioGAS to access this feature. If you are running 64-bit Windows, you can install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of ioGAS and license them both using the same license file. Server license users just need to enter the server details into each installation (this is still equivalent to one server license file).

A: This was an issue identified in MapInfo when you chose to print from the Layout window. What usually happens when the layout window is exported as a PDF file, the shapes appear different to the ones seen in the ioGAS data file (even though colors and sizes appear normal). One solution in MapInfo is to go to File>Print to PDF from a Map or Layout Window with any ET font set displayed and ensure Enhanced Rendering is disabled for the mapper (accessible from Map>Options menu). This will ensure that the shapes as seen in ioGAS will carry on through when exported as a pdf file from MapInfo.

A: Follow the steps outlined here to add a custom projection to the ioGAS projection library.

A: The ArcGIS export is only available in 32-bit version of ioGAS as the ArcGIS software is only available in 32-bit. This error message appears when you try to use the ArcGIS export in ioGAS 64-bit version. In ioGAS version 4.5, the ArcGIS export button has since been greyed out to prevent this error message from appearing.

A. Use the Copy Entire Window at High Resolution window button at the bottom of the Right-Hand toolbar.  This will copy the entire window as a bitmap image to the Clip Board which you can then paste into an image processing program (eg. Paint or Irfanview, Paint Shop Pro, etc) and then print to your plotter from here.

A: Yes.  Before creating the scatterplot matrix go the Window menu and select Scrolling Window.  Make the scatterplot as usual and there will now be up/down and left/right scrollbars available to scroll around the plot and the individual plots should be displayed at a higher resolution.

A: The only way to modify these very long labels at present is to either click on an individual plot and choose Properties and modify the name in here or to do it for each column in the Column Properties dialog prior to creating the scatterplot matrix.

A. Use the Copy Entire Window at High Resolution window button at the bottom of the RHS toolbar when the scatterplot matrix window is open.  This will copy the entire window as a bitmap image to the Clip Board which you can then paste into an image processing program (eg. Paint or Irfanview, Paint Shop Pro, etc) and then print to your plotter from here.

A:  It sounds like the data limits for the installed ioGAS executable file have been reached.  Although ioGAS could successfully create the SPLOM copying to the clipboard was unable to be completed.  For more memory intensive operations such as creating large SPLOM plots (and in this case copying to clipboard), gridding or even just importing large files it is possible to load up additional ioGAS executable files which enable more machine memory to be utilised.  See Data Limits for more information on how to do this.

A: This is caused by having too many variables selected for the scatterplot matrix, thus causing ioGAS to try to fit them into a single window. A solution is to reduce the number of variables to display. This would increase the individual plot size.

A: The first variable in the list is used as the X axis and all of the other variables are then plotted against it in the XY scatterplot graphs.   This behaviour does not apply to scatterplot matrix diagrams or map views.

A: If you created the plot with the XY scatterplot icon, use the YX scatterplot icon.  The capital represents the axis on which the first variable in the variable select dialog will be placed.

If you hover over the line in the plot it gives you the equation in a tooltip.   You can’t automatically add it to the plot.  If you use the regression tool (from the Analysis menu) the reports contains the regression equation.

A: The row colours reflect the current setting from the Column Properties dialog eg. black are text fields, blue rows are numeric columns.  Green rows are numeric columns which have been “aliased” to standard geochemical names so they can be used with the supplied calculations, classification diagrams and spider plots.  When the dataset contains columns that have been produced as a result of a calculation within ioGAS then these will appear as dark blue or dark green numeric columns depending on whether the input columns were “aliased”.  The colours will help in selecting appropriate variables for your plots.

A: Make sure you have variables selected in the Data>Select Variables dialog first. Different plots require different numbers of variables to be selected, eg. two for a scatterplot, three for a tri-plot, etc.

A: ioGAS has a number of summary tools available.  Both parametric and ranked based statistics can be plotted per colour attribute group.  The samples points can be hidden to make viewing these summary statistics easier.

A: Make sure the column is correctly aliased in the Column Properties dialog.  Spider transformations rely on aliasing, in order to correctly identify elements and their units.

A: Use the Copy button on the Right Hand Side toolbar when the Spider Plot window is opened to copy to clipboard and then paste into WordPad, NotePad, etc.

A; Yes. See Create Spider Plot for more information.

A: To switch from displaying solid mean data to all data in a spiderplot use the second icon down on the RHS toolbar called “Change visibility of data points”.  If your dataset has a large number of rows ioGAS automatically displays the spiderplot using the data means as it difficult to view the individual samples when there are a lot of them.  If you don’t want to display the mean data lines on top of the individual data rows then click on the “Change Parametric Statistical Summary” icon a couple of times to remove them from view (3rd icon on RHS toolbar).  To summarise: the 2nd icon down turns individual data points on and off, the 3rd icon down cycles through showing Solid Means, Solid Mean +/- 1 sigma or no mean lines.  The 4th icon down showing Percentile summaries works in the same way.  Sometimes you need to play around with each icon to see exactly what it does and click on it a few times to see the changes and how they work together.

A: The data groups which are used to display the mean lines are taken from the colour attributes only.  It is only when the individual data rows are displayed on the Spiderplot that you can see the colour/shape/size attribute for each data point.

A: A spiderplot works by dividing the analytical data with the normalised value specified in the plot’s xml file. A spiderplot xml file consists of a list of elements and the normalisation value for each element. For example, if you want to create a spiderplot that normalises to the following values:

La of 50 ppm, Ce of 100 ppm, Dy of 5 ppm

You will then need to edit the values bracketed by <m> </m> (shown in bold in the text below). The spiderplot will divide by these values to normalise the plot.

<transformation_mx_c name=”test”>

                                <Comment>test</Comment>

                                <Reference>test</Reference>

                                                <element name=”La”  unit=”ppm”>

                                                                <m>50</m>

                                                                <c>0</c>

                                                </element>

                                                <element name=”Ce”  unit=”ppm”>

                                                                <m>100</m>

                                                                <c>0</c>

                                                </element>

                                                <element name=”Dy”  unit=”ppm”>

                                                                <m>5</m>

                                                                <c>0</c>

                                                </element>

                </transformation_mx_c>

For more details on how to set up custom spider plot, please refer to the following guide: http://iogas.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Create-Spider-Plot-Normalisation.pdf

A: Select the summary statistics window and then click on the Display Statistic Selection icon on the RHS toolbar.  It may be necessary to drag the options window to a larger size to view the percentile selections and clear/select all percentiles option.  The checked selection of statistics will be applied to any newly created statistics windows and the most recently highlighted statistics window.

A: Select the summary statistics window and then click on the top left hand corner cell to be able to copy all the summary cells.  Alternatively use the icon from the RHS (Right-Hand Side) toolbar to copy all the records to the clipboard and then paste into Word or Excel.  To make a selection of records to copy, hold down the left-mouse button and drag to highlight the rows of interest.  The Ctrl and Shift keys can be use to aid in this selection (as for any Microsoft office program).  One trick is to also highlight the variables row without selecting all cells is to use Ctrl and left-mouse click on any other of the cells in that row.

A: The order of the columns in the Summary Stats is the same as in the Data>Select Variables dialog.  Swapping axes will reset the order of variables/statistics.  To change the order of statistics, it is possible to switch the axes using the switch icon on the RHS toolbar (while the summary statistics window is active) and have the variables as rows and the statistics as columns.  However, to keep the order chosen, the cells will have to be copied in this transposed format.

A: If the statistics button is greyed out then make sure that the Data>Select Variables dialog has some data columns selected.  If no statistics are displayed after clicking on the Statistics button on the main Toolbar and select the Display Statistic Selection button on the RHS toolbar and make sure that the desired statistics are checked in here.  If problem persists delete all the *.gst files in the install directory if you’re running ioGAS version 4.4 and older, or delete all the *.gst files in the user configuration directory (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ioGAS\state) if you’re running version 4.5 to reset and re-start the program.  One of these files is a cache of the chosen stats which may have become corrupted.

A: Yes.  Open up the Summary Statistics window and use the Change Univariate/Multivariate Mode icon on the RHS toolbar.  Multivariate mode shows the statistical results calculated using only samples which have valid results for ALL the selected elements. i.e will not include any samples that have a null value in any of the selected columns.

A: The Attribute Manager does not use percentiles but is binning data into equal bins.  The reported values for each percentile bin are the maximum values for each bin.  For example, for example, the dataset 1,2,3,4 split into two bins will have maxima of 2 and 4 yet the 50th percentile value is 2.5.  The Summary Statistics utility uses an algorithm documented in http://commons.apache.org/math/apidocs/org/apache/commons/math/stat/descriptive/rank/Percentile.html.

A: For each drillhole you need X, Y and Z coordinates generated for each sample interval prior to importing the data into ioGAS.  In the Data>Column Properties dialog match the X column to the Easting, Y column to Northing and Z column to Elevation. The data is now ready to be displayed in a 3D spatial plot.

A: No.  It is not possible to de-survey drillholes in ioGAS.  This will need to be done outside of ioGAS in another program and then imported.

Users who are running MapInfo/Discover can calculate XYZ coordinates using one the Drillhole menu options when they have a drillhole project open and many other mining software programs will also be able to generate 3D downhole coordinates as well.

A: Try subsetting the drillhole data (ie. turning off a number of drillholes/sample points in the Attribute Manager) to less than 40,000 visible points and then see if the icon becomes active.  If so, open the 3D spatial window and then turn on the visibility for the other data points. There is a data limit set for the number of points that is preventing all of the data being able to be opened into the 3D plot window initially so the workaround is to only open a small number of data points first of all.

Aside from using your drillhole data with any of the standard ioGAS plots and univariate/multivariate analysis tools there are two main tools that are designed specifically to be used with drillhole data. These are the 3D spatial plots  and the Line Plot tool. The 3D spatial plot works just like the Attribute Map but for drillhole data which already has XYZ values for each sample interval in the dataset. You can apply colour/shape/size attributes to the downhole sample intervals and even export the attributed data in 3D DXF format to use in other mining programs.

The other tool which you may find useful for working with drillhole data as well is the Line Plot tool. This enables you to display each of your drillholes in a continuous line plot which can be stacked for easy comparison between holes. It is possible to attribute the line plot data points with other variables as well.

A. Click on the Line Plot icon on the main toolbar. Select the Hole_ID column in your dataset as the grouping column and a depth or Z coordinate column as the continuous variable. Leave the variable format as numeric.

In the next dialog select the drillholes you would like to display and how you would like to display them, eg. stacked on top of each other, tiled, etc.

For a full description of how to use the Line Plot tool and a list of the various Line Plot options click here.