Eye4Software Hydromagic

Eye4Software Hydromagic is a complex hydrographic survey program that enables you map regions, display your GPS position on the map, record depths, and use an echosounder, among other actions. It sports a wide range of advanced features that are mainly geared toward experienced users.

The GUI is pretty user-friendly, represented by a large window that shows the map, a project explorer to keep track of all map elements, a menu bar, and numerous buttons.

In order to start a new project, it is necessary to define the name and saving directory, map projection, project description, and surveyor. There are numerous projections available and they can be filtered by country as well as edited in properties (e.g. false northing, latitude of origin, parallel north, horizontal units).

It is possible to import maps, matrix and ASCII data, Hydromagic configuration files, along with previously done projects. Maps may also be downloaded, while a matrix can be generated from soundings and shorelines as well as shown as colors or depths.

Eye4Software Hydromagic is also capable of processing raw data and managing data files. You can create and administer waypoints, add soundings, shorelines and boundaries, generate corrected soundings from raw data, import photos, generate and manage sections, check out the sky view and echosounder display, show a L/R indicator, as well as enable moving map mode so it can show your current position in real time.

You can calculate geoidal separations for given points, convert measurement units, generate contours, view tide predictions for a given date, country, station, datum and timezone, customize the matrix color scheme, record sounding to file, draw boundaries by selecting corner coordinates, and so on.

The program had minimal impact on PC performance in our tests. It executed commands swiftly and remained stable throughout the entire evaluation. No error dialogs popped up, and the tool did not hang or crash. A complete help manual is available, which should be definitely consulted to learn how to use Eye4Software Hydromagic. In conclusion, this proves to be a reliable and skilful hydrographic survey application that should meet the requirements of most users.