ArcView and ESRI Information
ESRI is one of the leading manufacturers of Geographic Information Systems software (GIS). Their software includes programs like ArcInfo and ArcView as well as dozens of other programs. ESRI programs can be very useful for cave surveyors, land managers and other people who need to evaluate cave and karst areas in relation to geological and geographic information. For this reason, Compass provides special tools for integrating cave data with GIS programs.
3D Exporter. The Compass 3D Exporter can convert cave data to Shapefiles, DXF files or VRML files. Shapefiles can be read by many different GIS programs including ESRI programs such as ArcView. The Exporter can generate nine different types of shapefiles including 3D passage modeling.

Passage Modeling. The image to the right show typical cave passage displayed in ArcView 3D Analyst. The shots are shown as red lines, the stations as black dots and passages as transparent green solids.
 

Surface Terrain. Here is an example showing Lechuguilla Cave with the surface terrain overlaid as  It is a good example showing what can be done with ArcView using COMPASS data files.
ESRI Support. ESRI has been very supportive of cavers, and cave conservation. They have also very supportive cave survey programmers and cartographers. They even  have their own web page devoted to supporting and encouraging cave and karst issues. Here is a link to ESRI's Cave and Karst web page: ESRI's Cave and Karst Web Page
 

Free Software. ESRI also provides free software and trial versions that can be very useful to cavers:

  • ArcExplorer. ArcExplorer is a free viewer that is available from ESRI. It allows you to view Shapefiles and many other data types including maps, images and aerial photograph.
  • ArcView 60-day Trial. ArcView is the main GIS product from ESRI. This 60-day trial version allows you to experiment with cave data and GIS.

CaveTools. One of the biggest supporters of cavers at ESRI is Bernard Szukalski. He has written an import tool for ArcView called "CaveTools" that allows you to import COMPASS file into ArcView. He has also helped other survey programmers make their software compatable with ArcView. Here are links that will allow you to get copies of CaveTools: