What system requirements are recommended to run PA Explorer 2024 (64-bit)?

Josh Knight — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 23:52:33 GMT

PA Explorer 2024 supports the following operating systems:

Windows® 11 (64-bit)
Windows® 10 (64-bit)
Windows® 8.1 (64-bit)
Windows® 8 (64-bit)
Windows® 7 (64-bit)

- ARM CPU Processors such as or Qualcomm Snapdragon or Apple Macbook M1/M2 chips are NOT supported.

- Apple Macintosh OSX and Linux operating systems are NOT supported.

- Virtualisation systems such as Citrix, Apple Mac Parallels or VMWare are NOT supported.

Is there a free viewer for PA sessions?

kbadmin — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:51:37 GMT

Yes, anyone can download and install PA Explorer. When you run PA Explorer, it will ask you to run as a free viewer mode, or to license.

If you select the run as a viewer you will be able to open and view sessions created in a licensed PA Explorer.

The download can be found in the related KB article.

What system requirements are recommended to run PA Explorer 2020 (32-bit)?

Josh Knight — Sun, 25 Jul 2021 23:05:51 GMT

PA Explorer 2020 supports the following operating systems:

Windows® 10 (32-bit or 64-bit)
Windows® 8.1 (32-bit or 64-bit)
Windows® 8 (32-bit or 64-bit)
Windows® 7 (32-bit or 64-bit)

- Apple Macintosh OSX and Linux operating systems are NOT supported.

You cannot add or edit the existing fill patterns listed in MapInfo Professional polygon styles.

There is a third party tool that does this -

https://fillpattern.com/#

You can create a series of objects that will imitate a fill pattern using Discover>Map Making>Apply See Thru Shading or MODIFY>Edit>Custom Patterns.

You can add custom bitmaps into the C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Encom\Common\Fill_Patterns- these will then appear within the Legend (Colour Pattern) Editor.
However they will not appear when applied to a 2D cross section. They will only work in the Discover3D or PA windows.

PA - nothing happens when I run it

kbadmin — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 06:09:12 GMT

Occurrence

When I run the Discover PA desktop shortcut, nothing happens or you may receive an error message "PA.exe error - the application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000805). Click OK to close the application."

It may also mention ermapper_u.dll in the error details.

Solution

This affects the ERMapper ALG components of the software. This is due to the PATH environment variable being longer than 1024characters, which typical happens on software delveopers computers installing multiple SDKs and IDEs such as JAVA SDK, Visual studio, Intel compilers etc.

You can simply disable this by -
1. Go to Start and search for "regedit.exe" and run this.
2. Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Earth Resource Mapping\PA(libversion6.0)

And rename the value BASE_PATH to BASE_PATHX

Alternatively you can manually reduce the length of the Path environment variable.
To view or change environment variables:

1. Right-click Computer on the desktop icon or in Windows Explorer, and then click Properties.
2. Click on Advanced System Settings.
3. Click the Environment variables button.
4. In the System Variables list (second list) - scroll down and find "Path"
5. Select this and click Edit...
6. Copy and paste the contents into a text editor or Word. If longer than 1024 you may need to remove ...

How to combine 2 grids so that new grid has grid1 values inside a polygon and grid2 values outside a polygon.

Josh Knight — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:29:31 GMT

You would need to start by using the Grid Utility "Clip" option (Gridding>Grid Utility menu option) to clip each grid using the dividing polygon in a 2D vector file (.TAB, .MIF, .SHP) so that it behaves as a cookie cutter. i.e. for Grid1 apply the polygon as a vector file and clip the area inside the polygon and for Grid2 apply the polygon and clip the area outside the polyogn.
Then use the "Merge" option in the Grid Utility to merge these two clipped grids together.

Cannot open the Aircraft Database in the Flight Path Simulator utility

Josh Knight — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:31:26 GMT

If trying to use the Flight Path Simulator utility in Encom PA and you get the following message when running SimFlightPath on a Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 machine:

"There was an error opening the aircraft database. You cannot generate flight paths without an aircraft database. Please contact Encom for help."

then you need to change the permissions for the Encom PA "Plugins" folder so that all users have Wirte permission to this folder and files within it. The reason for this is that when you open a Microsoft Access .MDB file, DAO creates a temporary LDB locking file in the same folder. So if you don't have this permission you can't open the .MDB file.

To overcome this problem in Encom PA v9.0 or earlier:

1. In Windows Explorer, right-click on the folder C:\Program Files\Encom\Encom PA\Plugins, choose the Properties pop-up menu option.
2. In the "Security" tab, press the "Edit" button.
3. Next, select "Users", enter the administrator password if prompted, tick the "Write" checkbox in the "Allow" column, and press OK.

I cannot see the Data Manager window in PA

Josh Knight — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 04:09:11 GMT

If the Data Manager window does not automatically appear underneath the Workspace Tree when you first execute PA check that the Data Manager button is selected in the Main toolbar.

If the Data Manager window still does not appear select the View>Toolbars>Reset Arrangement menu option.

Toolbars are automatically stacked vertically on the left-hand side of the screen.

Josh Knight — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:56:36 GMT

When the orientation of your toolbars are automatically stacked vertically on the left-hand

side of the screen (see image below), select View>Toolbars>Reset Arrangement to
horizontally align your toolbars along the top of the screen.

How can I read the X and Y coordinates for a location on a 2D map?

Josh Knight — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:57:42 GMT

Set the mouse cursor to pointer mode using the Select/Navigate toolbar button click with the left mouse button anywhere inside a 2D Map or Profile/Graph display window. In the status bar at the bottom left hand side of the screen the XY Indicator will display these coordinates.

To display the "Z" value from a 2D grid surface initiate the Information Sheet from the button on the Main toolbar and select the Data tab. When the cursor is held down on a 2D Map or Profile the Data sheet will populate with the values from the display, including X and Y coordinates.

Is there a way to close a database in PA without closing the session completely?

Josh Knight — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:56:56 GMT

Select the File>Close Datasets... menu option and in the Select Datasets to Close dialog select the
database that you wish to close from the Currently Open Datasets list.
Click on the right arrow button to move the highlighted dataset to the Datasets to Close list on the
right hand side of the dialog.
Click the OK button to exit the dialog.

Changing the X and Y fields in a Database

Josh Knight — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:32:11 GMT

By default, Encom PA automatically reads the X, Y, Z and Line fields as how they are named in the database being loaded. After a database is loaded, these coordinate fields can be changed to be other fields, eg “X_AMG, Y_AMG and Z_AMG or Sample” by the following two methods:

1. Open a spreadsheet window and right mouse click on the [Database Name] branch in the spreadsheet and select "Modify dataset properties".

or

2.Select "Modify Dataset Properties" from the File menu.

In the Modify Dataset Properties dialog select the database from the Dataset drop-down list and then choose a different field from the X Field and Y Fields drop down lists. Click Apply.

These default fields will not be changed immediately but only after the database is closed and then reloaded.

Datamine Discover KB - PA Explorer