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Version: 3.5 (unreleased)

Stratigraphic Markers

A stratigraphic marker is a point in the model carrying an age — a measured horizon, a dated sample, a picked contact. Where a mesh's stratigraphy says what a whole outcrop is, a marker pins a stratigraphy to one location.

See the Stratigraphy guide for how ages are chosen and how the stratigraphic column reads them.

Placing one​

Interpretations → Annotations → Strat Marker arms the tool: click the spot on the outcrop, then say what it is in its property sheet — the same way samples and waypoints are placed.

How it draws​

  • Markers use their own marker glyph, not the waypoint cone.
  • The glyph takes its colour from the official CGMW colour of the ICS unit the marker carries, so a scene of markers reads as the same palette as the stratigraphic column beside it. A marker with no unit yet is uncoloured.
  • The label is the most specific stratigraphy the marker carries — member, else formation, else group, else the ICS unit — because that is what identifies it on the outcrop. It falls back to the object's name (Strat Marker_3) only when there is no stratigraphy yet.

Properties​

Stratigraphy​

The shared stratigraphy editor — System / Series / Stage picked as a cascade, your own Group / Formation / Member, and a measured Age (Ma). A marker is a single point in time, so it gets one Age group rather than the Top and Base pair a mesh gets.

A read-back row shows the resolved age, or says "no age (descriptive only)" when only lithostratigraphy was given.

Position​

The usual point-annotation position rows.

Item Context Menu​

Right-click an individual stratigraphic marker in the Data Tree.

Source resources: IDR_DT_LABEL_ITEM.

  • Navigate To — Move the 3D view to this marker. (ID_POPUP_ITEM_GOTO)
  • Delete — Delete this marker from the project. (ID_POPUP_ITEM_DELETE)

Group Context Menu​

Right-click the Stratigraphic Markers group.

The standard group commands. The group's properties carry the point-annotation display options — Show Labels, Label Size, Maintain Size, Display Size and level of detail.

Maintain Size

With Maintain Size on, marker labels keep a constant on-screen size as you zoom, so a marker stays readable whether the whole cliff is in frame or you are up against one bed.

See also​