Golden Software has rolled out major upgrades to the 3D drillhole viewing capabilities of its flagship Surfer mapping and 3D visualisation package, delivering substantial efficiency gains and new features for users working across technical and scientific fields.
The latest release, version 30.1.218, brings a suite of new tools designed to save time and simplify the process of subsurface map creation for more than 100,000 users globally, many in environmental consulting, engineering, mining, oil & gas, water resources, and geospatial applications.
“Surfer remains the most powerful 3D subsurface visualisation package for users in numerous technical and scientific professions, and our recent enhancements to 3D drillhole viewing has significantly expanded its applicability in the energy, hydrology, and environmental monitoring sectors,” said Surfer Product Manager Kari Dickenson.
“All users will find something to like in the latest version.”
Among the headline improvements are the ability to create, edit, and export contact points within drillholes, allowing users to define criteria such as lithological formations or mineralisation zones and automatically generate surface points for comprehensive 3D visualisation.
For enhanced clarity, Surfer now supports up to four independent light sources, enabling full illumination of subsurface drillholes and surfaces, and offers convenient renaming of 3D view layers for better content organisation.
In terms of usability, the release introduces automated generation of legends for base layers with unique value symbology, customisable legend sample sizes, and alignment settings.
Users can also leverage a fast-running script to uniformly change font attributes across axes, labels, contours, and other text objects, streamlining manual editing tasks.
Continuing its commitment to user feedback and innovation, Golden Software has launched a Beta version of Surfer alongside the main release.
“In the Beta features, we focused on enabling users to create maps and visualisations faster than before while also making it easier to present and communicate subsurface information,” said Dickenson.
Beta users can trial automatic surface creation by connecting contact points, import and export AutoCAD DWG files as base layers, add contour and drillhole layers to legends, and even record 3D model visualisations as MP4 videos for sharing with colleagues.
These upgrades reaffirm Surfer’s reputation for delivering accurate, high-impact 2D and 3D visuals with user-friendly analytic and presentation tools, regularly outperforming more expensive alternatives in technical, engineering, and scientific projects worldwide.