AVEN(1)

💖 AVEN(1) — the aven girlies' era 💖

okay bestie, welcome to AVEN(1), straight off the Survex shelf (that's the source, mwah) — it's a real page, genuine manual energy, and I'm about to make it make sense.

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✨ NAME ✨

aven — sophisticated cave viewer. yes, sophisticated. she's got range. 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

aven [--survey=SURVEY] [--print] SURVEY_FILE

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So aven pulls up your processed cave surveys in a window, and then you get to play — manipulate the view, spin it, zoom it, the whole main character moment. 🌈

Now here's the tea on SURVEY_FILE. If it's an unprocessed survey data format that cavern can process, then aven literally just runs cavern on it for you, and if that works out, it displays the processed data. Iconic teamwork fr fr. And if there are any warnings and errors? It pops a log window with the output, and that output has clickable links that open the affected file at the problematic line. yes ma'am, we love a shortcut. 💖

SURVEY_FILE can also be already processed survey data — that's a Survex .3d file, a Compass .plt file, or a CMAP .sht file. It can ALSO be a Survex .pos file, or a CMP .una or .adj file — but lowkey heads up: for those, only stations get shown, not legs. (For .pos it's because the format only records station positions, periodt.) And fun fact, all Survex programs that read .3d files can also transparently handle these formats. casual slay. ✨

🌸 On-Screen Indicators 🌸

• Along the bottom of the screen there's an auto-resizing scale bar, and its length shifts as you zoom in or out. You can left-button drag on it to zoom 👆, and right click gives you a menu to pick units or hide the scale bar. (Wanna get it back? Menu bar → Control->Indicators. iykyk.)
• In the lower right corner there's a compass indicator showing which way North is. Drag it to rotate the view; and if, while dragging, you move the mouse outside the compass, the view snaps to 45° positions: N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW. Right click gives a menu to change the view to N/S/E/W, pick units, or hide the compass (Control->Indicators from the menu bar brings her back).
• Just to the left of the compass is the clino indicator, showing the angle of tilt. Drag it to tilt the view; if while dragging you move the mouse outside the clino, the view snaps to 90° positions: plan/elevation/inverted plan. Right click gives a menu to change the view to plan/elevation, pick units, or hide the clino (yep — Control->Indicators from the menu bar).
• In the upper right there's a colour key showing the correspondence between colour and depth (that's the default btw — you can also colour by other criteria 💜). Right click gives a menu to choose what to colour by, pick units, or hide the colour key (Control->Indicators from the menu bar, you know the drill).

🙈 Mouse Control 🙈

ngl, using the mouse to move the cave will probably feel the most natural. Genuine recommendation: try each of these out after reading this section so you can get a feel for how they work. go on, experiment, it's giving science. 🧪

• Hold down the right button and the view is panned when you move the mouse — it effectively feels like you're dragging the cave around. 🫶
• Hold down the left button and the view is rotated as you move left or right, and zoomed as you move up and down. Hold down Ctrl while dragging with the left mouse button and moving up and down instead tilts the view. Tilt goes 180 degrees from plan view → elevation view → a view from directly below (upside down plan). And okay, important: aven deliberately doesn't allow going beyond horizontal into an inverted view. that's the rule, we don't break it. 💀
• Got a middle button? Hold it down and move the mouse up and down to tilt the cave. Moving left and right has no effect. that's it, that's the whole middle button. 😭
• And if you have a scrollwheel, she zooms in/out. 🌀

By default the mouse moves the cave — but if you press Ctrl-R, the mouse will move the viewpoint instead (so everything goes in the opposite direction). Apparently this feels more natural to some people. not me, but pop off. 🙈

💅 Keyboard Control 💅

Same energy as the mouse controls bestie — a lil experimentation goes a long way here too.

Every single keyboard shortcut has a corresponding menu item, and those menu items show the keyboard shortcut. That's your in-app way to look up what the shortcut for a particular action is. no cap, super handy. 🔥

Delete is your bestie if you get lost! She resets the scale, position, and rotation speed, so the cave returns to the centre of the screen. 🎯 There are also keyboard controls to use:

• P and L select Plan and eLevation respectively.
• N, S, E and W select a view looking North, South, East and West respectively.

The change of view is animated to help you see where you are and how things relate. That animation is automatically disabled on slow machines to avoid user frustration (thoughtful 👑). And you can force skipping the animation by pressing the key again during it — so a double press always takes you there quickly. ⚡

Space toggles on and off automatic rotation about a vertical axis through the current centre point (which is moved by panning the view or by selecting a station or survey). R toggles the direction of auto-rotation. And the speed of auto-rotation is controlled by Z and X. 🎠

Crosses and/or labels can be displayed at survey stations:

• Ctrl-X toggles crosses
• Ctrl-N toggles station names
• Ctrl-L toggles the display of survey legs
• Ctrl-F toggles surface survey legs
• Ctrl-G toggles display of an auto-sizing grid
• Ctrl-B toggles display of a bounding box

O toggles display of non-overlapping/all names. Heads up though: for a large survey, turning on overlapping names will make update rather slow. 🐌

Holding down Shift accelerates all the following movement keys:

• The cursor keys pan the survey view (like dragging with the right mouse button).
• Ctrl plus cursor keys rotate and tilt (like the mouse left button with Ctrl held down). C/V do the same as Ctrl plus cursor left/right, while Apostrophe ' and Slash / do the same as Ctrl plus cursor up/down.
• [ and ] zoom out and in respectively.

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⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

• -p, --print — Load the specified file, open the print dialog to allow printing, then exit. 🖨️
• -s, --survey=SURVEY — Only load the sub-survey SURVEY.
• --help — display short help and exit.
• --version — output version information and exit.

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🔍 SEE ALSO 🔍

cavern(1), diffpos(1), dump3d(1), extend(1), sorterr(1), survexport(1)

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👑 Copyright 👑

1998-2025 — that's the run, and honestly? a legacy. 💜

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you're officially fluent in aven. and for the record, this whole thing is dated Jun 23, 2026, from the Survex crew's manual for AVEN(1) — go forth and view some caves, you've got this. 🦋✨🎀