Noddy 3D Modelling Home Page

This page houses links to the Noddy 3D Geological and Geophysical Modelling System. The Noddy modelling system allows you to rapidly build complex 3D geological models and calculate the resulting gravity and magnetic fields. It's primary use in in teaching, although of course it does allow you to try out simply geological scenarios as well.

How Noddy Works:

In order to characterise the complex three dimensional structures that often cause geophysical anomalies it is necessary to have some understanding of the structural history of an area. The basis for this program is the ability to construct a complex geological history as a succession of relatively simple structural, sedimentary and igneous events. Each geological history is defined as a sequence of kinematic events, and each event is defined by a set of orientation, position and scaling parameters. The structural modelling used in this program were first written by M Jessell as part of an MSc at Imperial College, London University, in 1981, as an interactive map creation package, and later commercialised by www.encom.com.au after geophysical modelling capabilities and many other changes were made as part of an industry funded AMIRA collaboration between Monash University and the CSIRO. (Encom has since been taken over and the new company does not and will not support the version available here, so please don't ask them).

The program consists of introducing geoelogical events to effect an infinite volume of rock. The displacement equations are defined explicitly or implicitly with respect to flat planes, so that the curvature of the earth is ignored. The displacement equations within this program are all unary, that is there is a one to one mapping of all points before and after each deformation event. The user is protected from these equations and is instead asked to describe the deformation in "normal" structural terms, such as strike and dip.

Links:

Download As of the 4/11/2009 this version installs all the manuals and example files, and is an Open Source equivalent to the final commercialised version.

Batch version Source Code (does not require any non-open source libraries, but has no GUI), compiles under gcc. Comes with python wrappers (work in progress).

Full Source Code (Requires commerical XVT libraries, if someone wants to recompile this with another GUI than XVT, on another platform, with better functionality, be my guest...), just email me: mark.jessell@uwa.edu.au

Manual (HTML)

Manual (PDF) The missing pages 19-25 refer to licensing issues that are no longer relevant!

Tutorials (PDF) Tutorial input files

Atlas of Structural Geophysics (comprehensive suite of models available for download from the Journal of the Virtual Explorer Volume 5)

If you make a nice model, or class exercise, it would be great if you could send it to me mark.jessell@uwa.edu.au and I will create a set of user supplied examples.

Publications:

Jessell, M.W., 1981 NODDY- An interactive map creation package, Unpublished MSc, University of London, 1981 link

Jessell, M.W. & Valenta, R.K. 1996. Structural Geophysics: Integrated structural and geophysical mapping. In: Structural Geology and Personal Computers, Ed. D.G. DePaor. 303-324. Elsevier Science Ltd, Oxford. 542 pp.

Farrell, S. M., Jessell, M. W., Barr, T. D. 1996. Inversion of Geological And Geophysical Data Sets Using Genetic Algorithms. Society of Exploration Geophysicists Extended Abstract, 1404-1406.

Jessell, 2002. An atlas of structural geophysics II. Journal of the Virtual explorer, 5. link

Clark, D.A., Geuna, S. and Schmidt, P.W. 2004. Predictive magnetic exploration models for porphyry, Epithermal and iron oxide copper-gold deposits: Implications for exploration. Short course manual for AMIRA p700 project available at: link

Armit, Robin, Laurent Aillere, Peter G. Betts, Bruce Schaefe, Teagan Blaikie. 2014. High-heat geodynamic setting during the Palaeozoic evolution of the Mount Painter Province, SA, Australia: Evidence from combined field structural geology and potential-field inversions. Geophysical Journal International 199(1):253-275.

Thiele, S.T., Jessell, M.W., Lindsay, M. Wellmann, F., Pakyuz-Charrier, E. 2016a. The Topology of Geology 1: Topological Analysis. Journal of Structural Geology, 91, 27-38.

Thiele, S.T., Jessell, M.W., Lindsay, M., Wellmann, F., Pakyuz-Charrier, E. 2016b. The Topology of Geology 2: Topological Uncertainty. Journal of Structural Geology, 91, 74-87.

Wellmann, J.F., Thiele, S., Lindsay, M., Jessell, M.W. 2016. pynoddy: An Experimental Platform for Automated 3D Kinematic and Potential Field Modelling. Geoscientific Model Development. 9, 1019-1035. doi: :10.5194/gmd-9-1019-2016

Pollack, A. 2020. Quantifying geological uncertainty and optimizing technoeconomic decisions for geothermal reservoirs. Unpublished PhD thesis. link

Guo, J.; Li, Y.; Jessell, M.; Giraud, J; Li, C.; Wu, L.; Li, F.; Liu, S. 2021. 3D Geological Structure Inversion from Noddy-Generated Magnetic Data Using Deep Learning Methods. Computers and Geosciences link

Jessell, M.W., Jiateng Guo, Yunqiang Li, Mark Lindsay, Richard Scalzo, Jérémie Giraud, Guillaume Pirot, Ed Cripps, and Vitaliy Ogarko. 2022. Into the Noddyverse: a massive data store of 3D geological models for machine learning and inversion applications. Earth System Science Data. 14, 381-392. link

License:

As of May 2009 this software is no longer subject to an commercial release, and hence is freely distributable (and hence is no longer the object of professional support, you get what you pay for!).

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1) The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.

2) Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.

3) This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.