Guys,
I’ve had a few requests for this program of late, so I thought I’d just post it here and get some feedback and constructive criticism.
For a while I’d be using ZPlan, and then ZPlanner for cutting primary and bail-out tables. Whilst I found that both do their intended job, they leave a lot to be desired in regards to data entry and printing tables. I also looked at commercial products such as GAP and DecoCheck , however I didn’t find that any of them suited my requirements.
To this end, I created Visual ZPlan to fill the void. Like ZPlanner, Visual ZPlan is a Windows based wrapper or GUI around the base ZPlan command line application. Simply put, it captures input values via the Windows interface and passes them to ZPlan which does all the deco calculations. The direct output is captured and displayed in grid and graph format. Due to this, Visual ZPlan is limited to the functionality of ZPlan which cannot be changed.
My main objectives for building the application were:
- Easy entry of dive profile info
- Quick and simple OC bailout tables for CCR dives (ie. Enter the primary profile, and automatically produce bailout tables)
- Tailored table printing (ie. Targeted printing for 100x150 or 4”x6” photo cards, which are easily laminated)
- Ability to save entered dive profiles
I did not implement the repetitive dive feature of ZPlan using the tissue.dat file, so for now at least Visual ZPlan can only be used to run single dive profiles.
You download and install it from
Visual ZPlan Webpage.
More information can be found in the
Visual ZPlan User Guide.
Like ZPlan, Visual ZPlan is free.
Note: There is a bug in the Microsoft ClickOnce installation procedure that prevents the online install from happening behind a proxy server that requires authentication. I expect this will only affect people attempting to install the application at work. I'll hopefully have an offline installation option available in the near future. This bug only affects the installation, not the execution of the program.