Geophysics Forum

[topgpr]

Free contour softwares for geophysics

by topgpr » Fri Apr 13, 2012 4:37 pm

Does anyone know a free software to do contour maps?

[Guilhem]

Re: Free contour softwares for geophysics

by Guilhem » Sat Apr 14, 2012 9:17 am

What kind of data do you want to map ?

[topgpr]

Re: Free contour softwares for geophysics

by topgpr » Sat Apr 14, 2012 9:36 am

I want to show the topography data with a contour map.

[Guilhem]

Re: Free contour softwares for geophysics

by Guilhem » Sat Apr 14, 2012 10:14 am

Obviously, the easiest way to obtain contour lines from a DEM is Surfer but then you hav to pay.

Otherwise, you can achieve that thanks to a GIS. If you already have ArcMAP without 3D analyst or Spatial analyst, then you can download ETgeowizard. If you want a complete and totally free GIS, you have QGIS which seems to be really good.

Hope it helps

[ncoord]

Re: Free contour softwares for geophysics

by ncoord » Sat Apr 14, 2012 1:09 pm

There are many free contour software out there, you can use any of them for your simple contour tasks. You can use Excel from microsoft office, or Open Office (which is totally free), but Surfer is still one of the most common software we use.

[Gery]

Re: Free contour softwares for geophysics

by Gery » Sat Apr 14, 2012 1:29 pm

GMT (http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/), you can do almost everything with it, you have linux and windows executables.

[topgpr]

Re: Free contour softwares for geophysics

by topgpr » Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:48 pm

Thank you all for the quick responses, they are very helpful!