Planes Overview

The primary use of Dips is for plotting and analyzing planar data on a stereonet. The term "Planes" may refer to:

• Planar orientation data entered in the Dips Grid Data view (referred to as Grid Data Planes).
• Planes added to the stereonet with the Add User Plane option (referred to as User Planes or Added Planes)
• Mean Planes calculated from Sets (poles within a defined Set Window)

Grid Data Planes

The Grid Data Planes are the planes defined by the planar orientation data in the first two columns ( Orientation Columns) of the Dips Grid Data view.

The data may be entered in:

• Dip/DipDirection format
• Strike/Dip format, or
• In the case of Oriented Core ( Borehole Traverse), Alpha and Beta angles measured on the core.

User Planes

Additional planes can be added to the stereonet with the Add User Plane option. These are referred to as User Planes or Added Planes, and can represent any planar feature that you wish to highlight on the stereonet (typically used to represent slope orientations or other significant planar features). They can be added and edited graphically, and visibility settings customized, independently of the Grid Data Planes entered in the Grid Data view.

Mean Planes

Mean Planes are the mean planar orientations calculated for Sets. Sets can be defined using various Set Window options or from Cluster Analysis. Mean plane orientations cannot be directly edited, since they are calculated from the poles contained in a Set. The visibility and display settings of mean planes can be customized independently of User Planes or Grid Data Planes.

Major Planes

The term Major Planes refers to both User Planes and Mean Planes from sets. Major planes can be viewed on a clean stereonet with the Major Planes Plot Preset button in the toolbar or the View menu.