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In this guide, we’ll give you tips and tricks for working in a Geosoft database without an undo button. How to prevent errors and roll back mistakes.

Duration

5 min

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Video Transcript

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<v Becky>Hi everyone. My name is Becky Bodger</v>

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and I’m a Technical Analyst at Seequent.

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This short video is going to hopefully show you

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some useful tips about working in a database

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without an undo button.

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I teach a lot of Oasis montaj courses here at Seequent.

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And one of the biggest questions I get from users,

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is why is there no undo button in a database?

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And I get it. We all make mistakes.

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And it would be really nice if we had that controls,

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that safety net, but we don’t.

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And this doesn’t have to be a limitation.

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There are a few tricks you can employ

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when working in Oasis montaj,

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that will eliminate the need for an undo button altogether.

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The first is using channel protection.

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All channels are protected by default on import.

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You can see in my database,

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there’s a black triangle in the corner

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of each channel header.

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You can unprotect or protect a single channel

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by right clicking and clicking protected.

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You can protect none,

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if you want to make changes to the entire database,

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or you can protect all.

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If you’re running a script to go through your workflow,

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you can also add the chanprotect.gx

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to the bottom of any script.

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And this will automatically protect

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all of your output channels created from the script.

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So in this example,

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I created a distance and a sample separation,

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and they’re already protected.

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So I can’t accidentally edit them.

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So now that all your channels are protected,

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if you actually want to start editing your Mag

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or your Altitude channel for example,

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you’ll need to make a copy.

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So one way to do that is to create a new channel,

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type the name, click okay.

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And then select it three times,

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click it three times so that everything is selected

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and press the equal sign.

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This will turn the bottom bar into a formula

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and you can just type the name of the channel

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that you want to copy and press enter.

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If your channel names are short,

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that’s a great way to do it.

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If you have longer channel names,

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you can just use the database tool,

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channel tool, copy a channel.

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Just lets you pick the longer channel names

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from a dropdown menu.

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So let’s display these two profiles,

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these two channels as profiles.

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And let’s say we have some spikes,

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and we want to start cleaning up the spikes and the geode.

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We’re going to zoom in on the spikes

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that we see for example.

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And you know, you’re going to highlight

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the portion of data you want to get rid of

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and then press the space bar to delete it.

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But oh no, our cursor was actually

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in the Altitude edit channel,

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which means the data we deleted was the Altitude,

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not the Mag.

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I make this mistake more often than I should probably admit,

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but it’s a pretty easy fix.

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If you right click on the channel name

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and use the channel maker, that copy channel,

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you can just reapply the last tool

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and the same settings that were used on that channel.

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Now let’s say you’re on the right channel,

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but you’ve deleted a bigger portion of data

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than you meant to, whatever the mistake may be.

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If we display the original Mae,

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you can sort of compare what you deleted

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to the original data.

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And I can see, you know what,

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on second thought, that’s too much.

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Let’s go back and try to put back some of the original data.

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You can highlight just the portion you want to copy back.

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And in the database, press that equal sign

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until you get that formula down at the bottom

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and then press enter.

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And you can see that what you’re actually doing here

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is you’re restoring the original Mag channel

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just on the portions that you’ve highlighted.

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So you’re just highlighting it,

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pressing equal and then enter.

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The last thing I want to show you,

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is this discard database changes.

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This is sort of a last resort.

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If you can’t undo your changes any other way,

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you can discard all the changes since your last save.

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We call this a last resort,

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because if you don’t remember when your last save was,

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you could potentially be losing

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a lot of work that you’ve just done.

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So make sure you save.

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And then if we make a change here,

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like just copy back all the original data

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and then we hit discard,

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it will go back to the same state it was

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when we last hit save.

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So if you need to use discard,

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obviously knowing the last time you save

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is going to be really important.

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So what you can do is actually change

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the frequency of the auto save function.

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So if you go into settings, advanced global settings,

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there’s an option on the first dialogue,

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which is the auto save time.

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Now it’ll be by default, be set to 30 minutes.

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That means that every 30 minutes,

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you’re going to get a prompt

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that asks you if you want to save.

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You can switch this to something more frequent,

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like 15 minutes or even every 10 minutes.

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Now to some, especially the more advanced users,

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this might just be a really big annoyance.

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But for others like beginners,

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I think that this is really just the reassurance you need.

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Because if you do have to use discard database changes,

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all you’re discarding is 10 or 15 minutes of work

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instead of 30 minutes or an hour,

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which in the long run is actually going to save you some time.

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Thanks for watching.

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And as always, if you have any questions

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you can reach out to me directly

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or our support team @supportatseequent.com.