Questions and Answers

PaleoScan runs on PCs, laptop, desktop or workstation. PaleoScan does not run on Mac computers. PaleoScan can also run on Virtual Machines.

PaleoScan requires Windows 64-bit version 7 or above.

The minimum /recommended hardware configuration to run PaleoScan is:

The recommendation for the percentage of physical memory allocated to PaleoScan is to keep the 30% default value for a machine with at least 16GB of RAM.

The “Temporary Directory” stores intermediate volumes computed by PaleoScan. The “Temporary Directory” does not need to be at the same location than the PaleoScan project and can be set by the user. It must however have at least 3 times the size of the seismic volume of free space.

The recommendation for GPU usage is to select the graphic card and for the CPU usage is to keep the default number of threads. Note that enabling the GPU parallelization will not dramatically increase Paleoscan’s performance except for the Properties Modeling module.

CPU parallelization is widely used in PaleoScan but GPU acceleration (using OpenCL technology) is currently used only in the Properties Modeling module and for some attributes computation, such as similarity. When both are enabled, GPU is used instead of CPU for the processes that support GPU. The other processes that do not support GPU but CPU parallelization run faster when CPU multithreading (several threads running on the same CPU) is enabled. However, all the threads are processed on the machine running PaleoScan and share the machine’s memory. Threads cannot be processed separately on different CPUs and memories. Paleoscan’s tasks (Geo-Model, attributes computation...) can only be started from the PaleoScan GUI (Graphical User Interface) as single executables. Distributed environments, with several physical machines with separated memory and CPU, are therefore not supported. 

Our internal benchmarks show that PaleoScan’s performance does not increase linearly with the number of cores used: 8 cores will definitely improve the performance but it will peak at 16 cores and even decrease beyond 16.

PaleoScan accesses hard drives intensely for reading from and writing to the flat file database. PaleoScan therefore works best when Input/Output to hard drives is optimized, either by working locally or through a network with the application and the memory disks at the same physical location. Using Solid State Drives with increased I/O speed will also improve performance.

PaleoScan can import 8/16 bit Segy data and then keeps the original data size. However, almost all the steps of the PaleoScan workflow will create 32 bit volumes (attribute computation, Model-Grid...). As a result, the output volume size is bigger (x2 if 16 bits, x4 if 8 bits) than the original volume.

It is probably a graphic card issue. The user needs to check in the computer settings that the right graphic card is assigned to PaleoScan.

The add-on module needs to be activated through an extension available with a specific license.

Go to the Extensions menu and click on the add-on module(s) to activate them.

The latest PaleoScan uses an updated FlexNet License system. This implies that the license server needs to be updated, the Eliis daemon can be found on our Download page.

In the installation folder of PaleoScan 2018, for example: "C:\Program Files\Eliis\PaleoScan\2018.1\licensing\eliis.exe"

On our website (you need a login and password to access our extranet): Download

Eliis has developed two data connectors: Petrel® and OpenWorks®.

It is possible to change the unit of certain objects by clicking on the UNIT/CRS Editor icon. This tool is a correction tool and not a conversion tool, it changes the unit of the objects.

The interpretation in the Model Grid is polarity consistent, by default, the interpreted horizons cannot have polarity changes.

Nevertheless, the user can manage unconformities with polarity changes by disabling the "polarity consistency" option in the Properties of the model grid.

The preview is done using a couple of constraints around the yellow seed while the real geomodel uses all the constraints present in the entire grid.

The horizons coming from the Model-Grid are seismically consistent and present where there are data. In the case of erosion or non-deposition, the horizon will not be mapped. It is geologically consistent.

The horizons coming from the Horizon Stack are modelled through the Geo-Model, meaning they are smoother, covering the entire survey, even in the case of erosion or non-deposition, and following the trend of the seismic. They are no longer seismically consistent.

Not necessarily, even if there is a gap in the marked horizons. By increasing the interpolation parameter for the Geo-Model creation, PaleoScan will fill the gaps and the Horizon Stack will be complete (if the Interpolation Size is high enough).

To rename a horizon from the Model-Grid, the user has to open the Horizon List, right click on the name and select the option Rename.

The horizon can also be selected (F keyboard shortcut) by double clicking on the horizon in the Model-Grid (the horizon turns red), it can then be named from the Properties window.

Having gaps in the preview does not mean having a lack of nodes, it just means that the nodes inside the gaps are not linked to the rest of the Model-Grid. To address this issue, the user needs to connect nodes inside the gaps to nodes outside the gaps (i.e. where there is a preview).

If there is a gap in the preview that the user cannot fill, increasing the interpolation parameter in the Geo-Model Creation window will help fill the gaps in order to have a complete Geo-Model.

To refine the grid, the user needs to be in cross navigation mouse mode (G shortcut). They then need to place the seed on a specific event and press W to activate the chosen event. Next, they have to place the yellow seed on the belonging event and press W again, PaleoScan will connect both horizon patches. This action can be repeated as many times as needed to extend the current horizon as desired.

Once the user is done with the horizon refinement, they can click on the space bar to validate or on M to mark the event.

It is possible. To do this, the user needs to open the Model-Grid and click on the Grid Constraints and then Model-Grid Constraint icon and follow the workflow.

The user needs to make sure to start from the initial Grid (and not the AutoInterp). This ensures that the constraint from the horizons will be applied to a "blank canvas", and that there will not be any conflict.

They need to add the horizons to be used as constraints for the Initial Grid using the Horizon Constraint button.

Finally, they have to re-run an auto-interpretation using the Automatic Propagation button in order to take into account the horizon inserted as constraints.

The user has to keep in mind that if the horizons used as constraints are not single-polarity, PaleoScan may give results that are not consistent with the first interpretation.

To save or extract a specific horizon the user needs to mark the horizon, then select it using the Selection Mode (F shortcut) and click on the blue floppy disk in the top toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+S.

The grid can be generated between two horizons, or from the top/bottom of the seismic to the key horizon. The option is available in the Advanced Options of the Model-Grid Creation tool.

The input horizons need to be continuous where the Model-Grid is to be generated: no node will be computed between a hole (=void) and a surface, or a hole (=void) and another hole (=void). The Propagate/Interpolate tool available from the Horizon toolbar can be used to fill existing gaps or to generate full surfaces from a picked horizon.

In order to properly interpret and model the stratigraphic level of interest, it is strongly advised to shift both the upper and lower boundaries of +/- 100 to 300ms. This preliminary data conditioning can be done using the Vertical Shift tool available from the Horizon toolbar.

A cropped seismic volume can also be created. Using the Extraction tools available from the Volume toolbar, the user can create an extraction area and then extract this sub volume from the original one. The Model-Grid can then be created on this cropped volume.

Yes, to re-edit a marked horizon, the user needs to activate the cross-navigation mouse mode (G shortcut), put the seed on the marked horizon and press W. The horizon can then be edited as desired.

In the Advanced Options of the Model-Grid creation tool, an Exclusion Zone(s) parameter allows the user to drop objects (layers, geobodies and Multi-Z) so that PaleoScan will not create nodes inside those objects.

The nodes display is a projection when the seismic section is not located exactly at the centre of the patch. Therefore, the nodes might be slightly shifted compared to the seismic events. The patches, which define the horizons, will follow the seismic events anyway.

The user needs to click on the Update button at the bottom of the horizon list to refresh it. The marked horizons will appear with a M

If faults and/or exclusion zones were used for the Model-Grid generation, there will be voids at the location of the faults/exclusion zones. This is quite useful if the user does not want to generate the grid around salt domes for instance. If the user wants to have nodes at these locations, they must not use the faults/exclusion zones option.

A marked horizon is a horizon that the user decides to highlight using the M keyboard shortcut. It is displayed in colour. However, it is not a saved horizon. Horizons that are not marked are also taken into account and validated by pressing the Space bar. All horizons, marked and not marked, will be used to calculate the Geo-Model.

The global interpretation needs to be saved using the top bar of the Model-Grid window or the Save Interpretation button of the Model-Grid toolbar.

Even though the "Truncation" mode is applied in the Strati Viewer and the "Edit/Create a GeoModel from Sequence" tool is used, the model produced shows condensed time intervals. Unfortunately, there is no way to create strictly truncated models.

Because of the above technical limitation, you cannot rely on a model to output Horizon Stack/Horizons where the horizons would be truncated according to geological truncations.

That being said,  here is the way to extract truncated horizons (in a Horizon Stack) out of the Strati Viewer:

1. When in the Strati Viewer, use the "Strati Sequence Picking" tool [J] to

a. Create layer boundaries corresponding to the unconformities in the seismic interval of interest,

b. Then create between the unconformity boundaries as many boundaries as desired horizons in the Horizon Stack you envision to create (do not use the Properties > Sub-layering option relative to the created layers). Color code does not reflect different types of boundaries but just for step understanding purpose.