A tool for cave cartography. Carto is a tool for making cave maps. Carto has two main parts. One is a mechanism for warping digitized sketches to fit the survey data, and combining them to form a composite. The other is a CAD program designed specifically for drawing cave maps.

Carto can be used to quickly produce and maintain a working map. A composite image of all the sketches can be used as an ugly, but complete, working map. After each survey trip the sketches are scanned and the stations are marked on the images. Carto deforms the raw sketches to fit the processed survey data and superimposes them. This "composite sketch" will not be pretty, it will show mud, grid lines, errasures, and all the idiosyncrasies of the individual sketchers, but it will also contain all the information in the original notes.

Carto can be used to produce a final map. Once the composite sketch of some or all of the cave has been built, the cartographer can start replacing the images with symbols. Carto contains a drawing program designed with the needs of cave cartography in mind. The cartographer basically traces over the images, replacing them with the symbols, curves etc. that will appear in the final map. The single tracing can replace both pencil and ink. The cartographer can then experiment with different views and layouts.

Carto can be used as a map viewer. The final map can be printed on paper or viewed on line. Online maps can be scaled, rotated and manipulated in other ways. Large maps can be viewed over the web through a Java applet.

Requirements:
* Java

The license of this software is Free, you can free download and free use this graphing software.