PSICAT

PSICAT, CHRONOS's Paleontological Stratigraphic Interval Construction and Analysis Tool, is a stand-alone Java based graphical editing tool for creating and viewing stratigraphic column diagrams from drill cores and outcrops. It is customized to the task of working with stratigraphic columns and captures data digitally as you draw and edit the diagram.

Simplified to the task at hand

One of the unique features that sets PSICAT apart from other drawing tools, such as Photoshop and CorelDRAW, is that it is customized to the task of drawing stratigraphic columns. To draw a new interval in CorelDRAW, you would have to draw a rectangle and perhaps freehand the right side if you wanted to represent grain size changes. Then you choose the pattern that represents the lithology of the interval and fill your rectangle with it. All this is necessary because these other programs have no idea what an interval is.

PSICAT works at a higher level; it knows what an interval is. So instead of drawing a box, you simply draw an interval. Instead of filling in the interval with a pattern to denote the lithology, you simply select a lithology from a drop down list and PSICAT fills in the interval for you. And since drawing with a mouse is far from exact, PSICAT will let you specify the exact depths and extents via the keyboard.

It's about the data, not the image

In addition to simplifying the task of drawing the stratigraphic columns, PSICAT also captures data, such as depths, grain sizes, lithologies, intervals, etc., about the diagram. CorelDRAW will give you a nice image of the column. PSICAT will give you the same nice image but will also give you data that can be uploaded into a database and searched. And the data can be used to recreate the diagram, possibly at different scales or perspectives.

This focus on the data makes doing some things in PSICAT more difficult than in a traditional drawing applications. The user can't go in and freehand something directly on the diagram in PSICAT like they would be able to if they were working with a regular image. However, because the data and the drawing are separated, PSICAT can be made to draw the same data in multiple different ways. Imagine trying to update a lithology pattern for 1000m of core in CorelDRAW. For PSICAT, it's just a matter of changing the drawing settings a bit.

An open, extensible platform

PSICAT has been designed from the beginning to be an open, extensible platform. It is built on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform and follows the same philosophy. PSICAT is composed of many collaborating plug-ins; each contributing new functionality and features. This makes it easy to add a new feature--just write a new plug-in and add it to the PSICAT application. It also makes it easy to customize PSICAT to different tasks--simply pick and choose the plug-ins that provide the functionality that you need and only include them. And best of all, plug-ins can build on each other so a problem only has to be solved once and other plug-ins can leverage that solution. This greatly simplifies adding new features that are similar to existing features.