Working with no ‘undo’ in Oasis montaj

Video Transcript

[00:00:04.510]<v Becky>Hi everyone. My name is Becky Bodger</v>

[00:00:06.530]and I’m a Technical Analyst at Seequent.

[00:00:08.540]This short video is going to hopefully show you

[00:00:10.280]some useful tips about working in a database

[00:00:12.510]without an undo button.

[00:00:14.410]I teach a lot of Oasis montaj courses here at Seequent.

[00:00:17.400]And one of the biggest questions I get from users,

[00:00:19.750]is why is there no undo button in a database?

[00:00:22.350]And I get it. We all make mistakes.

[00:00:24.000]And it would be really nice if we had that controls,

[00:00:25.910]that safety net, but we don’t.

[00:00:28.080]And this doesn’t have to be a limitation.

[00:00:30.280]There are a few tricks you can employ

[00:00:32.000]when working in Oasis montaj,

[00:00:33.680]that will eliminate the need for an undo button altogether.

[00:00:37.860]The first is using channel protection.

[00:00:40.120]All channels are protected by default on import.

[00:00:43.510]You can see in my database,

[00:00:44.630]there’s a black triangle in the corner

[00:00:46.890]of each channel header.

[00:00:48.530]You can unprotect or protect a single channel

[00:00:51.820]by right clicking and clicking protected.

[00:00:57.050]You can protect none,

[00:00:59.050]if you want to make changes to the entire database,

[00:01:02.090]or you can protect all.

[00:01:06.290]If you’re running a script to go through your workflow,

[00:01:08.810]you can also add the chanprotect.gx

[00:01:12.210]to the bottom of any script.

[00:01:13.830]And this will automatically protect

[00:01:15.550]all of your output channels created from the script.

[00:01:19.840]So in this example,

[00:01:20.810]I created a distance and a sample separation,

[00:01:23.170]and they’re already protected.

[00:01:24.630]So I can’t accidentally edit them.

[00:01:29.090]So now that all your channels are protected,

[00:01:31.070]if you actually want to start editing your Mag

[00:01:33.880]or your Altitude channel for example,

[00:01:36.570]you’ll need to make a copy.

[00:01:38.050]So one way to do that is to create a new channel,

[00:01:41.900]type the name, click okay.

[00:01:45.650]And then select it three times,

[00:01:47.430]click it three times so that everything is selected

[00:01:49.840]and press the equal sign.

[00:01:51.750]This will turn the bottom bar into a formula

[00:01:55.460]and you can just type the name of the channel

[00:01:57.420]that you want to copy and press enter.

[00:02:02.230]If your channel names are short,

[00:02:03.560]that’s a great way to do it.

[00:02:04.740]If you have longer channel names,

[00:02:06.400]you can just use the database tool,

[00:02:08.760]channel tool, copy a channel.

[00:02:13.070]Just lets you pick the longer channel names

[00:02:15.660]from a dropdown menu.

[00:02:19.740]So let’s display these two profiles,

[00:02:22.270]these two channels as profiles.

[00:02:25.040]And let’s say we have some spikes,

[00:02:27.630]and we want to start cleaning up the spikes and the geode.

[00:02:31.410]We’re going to zoom in on the spikes

[00:02:33.080]that we see for example.

[00:02:38.060]And you know, you’re going to highlight

[00:02:40.210]the portion of data you want to get rid of

[00:02:42.460]and then press the space bar to delete it.

[00:02:44.550]But oh no, our cursor was actually

[00:02:47.443]in the Altitude edit channel,

[00:02:49.370]which means the data we deleted was the Altitude,

[00:02:51.420]not the Mag.

[00:02:54.890]I make this mistake more often than I should probably admit,

[00:02:58.520]but it’s a pretty easy fix.

[00:03:00.150]If you right click on the channel name

[00:03:03.620]and use the channel maker, that copy channel,

[00:03:06.690]you can just reapply the last tool

[00:03:09.180]and the same settings that were used on that channel.

[00:03:14.830]Now let’s say you’re on the right channel,

[00:03:16.990]but you’ve deleted a bigger portion of data

[00:03:20.080]than you meant to, whatever the mistake may be.

[00:03:23.110]If we display the original Mae,

[00:03:24.610]you can sort of compare what you deleted

[00:03:27.310]to the original data.

[00:03:29.370]And I can see, you know what,

[00:03:30.950]on second thought, that’s too much.

[00:03:32.480]Let’s go back and try to put back some of the original data.

[00:03:36.100]You can highlight just the portion you want to copy back.

[00:03:40.560]And in the database, press that equal sign

[00:03:43.110]until you get that formula down at the bottom

[00:03:45.660]and then press enter.

[00:03:47.140]And you can see that what you’re actually doing here

[00:03:49.200]is you’re restoring the original Mag channel

[00:03:52.250]just on the portions that you’ve highlighted.

[00:03:57.530]So you’re just highlighting it,

[00:03:58.550]pressing equal and then enter.

[00:04:04.750]The last thing I want to show you,

[00:04:06.600]is this discard database changes.

[00:04:10.550]This is sort of a last resort.

[00:04:12.660]If you can’t undo your changes any other way,

[00:04:16.350]you can discard all the changes since your last save.

[00:04:22.015]We call this a last resort,

[00:04:23.510]because if you don’t remember when your last save was,

[00:04:26.870]you could potentially be losing

[00:04:28.310]a lot of work that you’ve just done.

[00:04:32.430]So make sure you save.

[00:04:33.810]And then if we make a change here,

[00:04:36.690]like just copy back all the original data

[00:04:39.020]and then we hit discard,

[00:04:41.030]it will go back to the same state it was

[00:04:42.850]when we last hit save.

[00:04:45.980]So if you need to use discard,

[00:04:48.590]obviously knowing the last time you save

[00:04:50.530]is going to be really important.

[00:04:51.610]So what you can do is actually change

[00:04:53.870]the frequency of the auto save function.

[00:04:57.240]So if you go into settings, advanced global settings,

[00:05:01.800]there’s an option on the first dialogue,

[00:05:03.700]which is the auto save time.

[00:05:07.300]Now it’ll be by default, be set to 30 minutes.

[00:05:11.787]That means that every 30 minutes,

[00:05:13.860]you’re going to get a prompt

[00:05:15.690]that asks you if you want to save.

[00:05:19.020]You can switch this to something more frequent,

[00:05:21.330]like 15 minutes or even every 10 minutes.

[00:05:24.640]Now to some, especially the more advanced users,

[00:05:27.980]this might just be a really big annoyance.

[00:05:30.850]But for others like beginners,

[00:05:33.200]I think that this is really just the reassurance you need.

[00:05:36.600]Because if you do have to use discard database changes,

[00:05:39.630]all you’re discarding is 10 or 15 minutes of work

[00:05:43.060]instead of 30 minutes or an hour,

[00:05:44.930]which in the long run is actually going to save you some time.

[00:05:49.000]Thanks for watching.

[00:05:50.070]And as always, if you have any questions

[00:05:51.530]you can reach out to me directly

[00:05:52.710]or our support team @supportatseequent.com.