*Step-by-step work through on earth volume computation using sufer*
The procedure assumes you already have sufer installed on your PC
👉Launch the sufer application by double clicking its icon on your desktop
👉On the program main menu, click Grid
👉Click data... in the drop down sub-menu
👉Navigate and locate the raw file containing your x,y,z data defining the surface in question
👉Click Open
An interface showing some sample of your data is displayed on the screen
👉Ensure that the appropriate field delimeter is selected and click OK
👉On the Grid Data interface that comes up next, select the appropriate field (i.e column) for each of your x, y, z data as contained in the previous interface
👉Select any desired griding method on the space provided for such on the Grid Data interface. The common and default method is kriging
*Note* : the result you obtain depends pretty much on the grid method you select as each of the methods uses different models in predicting the Grid elevation of the unobserved points
👉Click OK
The griding is then carried out by the application and the report displayed on the screen that can be saved to a file
*Note:* These procedures applies for each of the surfaces in the case of two surfaces volume computation. For a single surface, you just do that once for the available surface file
Next is to compute volume using the grid file created
👉On the program main Menu, click Grid
👉Click Volume in the drop down menu
👉Browse and locate the grid file created
👉Click to open the file
👉The Grid Volume interface pops up where you are expected to define your surfaces
👉The upper surface is natural ground surface (Topo-surface) for which a grid file has been created
👉The Lower surface is the grade or design surface
👉 For each of the surfaces, you can either chose to load a grid file or use a constant value
👉For a single surface volume with only the natural ground grid surface elevations, click and upload the grid file for the upper surface and define a constant, z value for the lower surface (graded surface)
👉 Leave the Z- factor as 1
👉Click OK
The cut and fill volumes are displayed with the associated areas obtained
*Note*: the results earth volumes may vary from one application to another even with the same data depending on the method for computing areas and of course the griding method