Orient is a fast, easy to use, professional spherical projection and orientation data analysis program. In 1986 Orient introduced modified Kamb contouring, triangular fabric diagrams, orientation fields, and automated structural domain analysis. Orient 3 brings a new level of accuracy and speed, with many new tools, including interactive data analysis, UTM coordinate conversions, digitizing, bootstrap statistics, cluster analysis, and integration with applications such as Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice, Adobe Illustrator, InkScape, CorelDRAW, and Google Earth.
Orient is for plotting and analyzing directional data, data that can be described by an axis or direction in space or, equivalently, by a position on a sphere or circle. Examples of data that are represented by unit vectors (directed) or axes (undirected) include geologic bedding planes, fault planes, fault slip directions, fold axes, paleomagnetic vectors, glacial striations, current flow directions, crystallographic axes, earthquake epicenters, cosmic ray arrival directions, comet orbital planes, positions of galaxies, whale migration paths, and the locations of objects on the Earth. Orient has been written to apply to a wide variety data types, however many examples come from structural geology, which requires extensive manipulation and analysis of orientation data.
Spherical projections are used to display three dimensional directional data by projecting the surface of a sphere, or hemisphere, onto a plane. Lines and planes in space are considered to pass through the center of a unit sphere, so lines are represented by two diametrically opposed piercing points. Planes are represented by the great circle generated by their intersection with the sphere or, more compactly, by their normal.
Spherical projections include equal-area (used for creating Schmidt nets), stereographic (used for creating Wulff nets or stereonets), orthographic, and equidistant projections. These can be plotted on either upper or lower hemispheres, or transparency can be used to simultaneously display both hemispheres. Point distributions are analyzed by contouring, and by computing eigenvectors or vector means. Data and projections can be rotated about any axis in space, to principal axes, or by live interactive rotation. For two-dimensional data, such as wind or current directions, circular plots and circular histograms, including equal-area and frequency polygon diagrams, can be prepared.
Data input formats include longitude and latitude, azimuth and altitude, declination and inclination, trend and plunge, strike and dip, dip and dip direction, and others. Orient does kinematic analysis of fault data, which is represented by a plane and the direction of slip within that plane, by generating P and T kinematic axes, tangent line diagrams, and beachball plots. Statistical analysis includes confidence cones based on Fisher, Kent, Watson, and Bingham distributions, bootstrap statistics, and small circle fitting.
Orient is compiled, tested, and debugged on Macintosh OS X, Windows, and Linux, and runs on Macintosh OS X 10.5 to 10.11, Windows XP and 7 to 10, and Linux distributions. For installation, download the correct version for your computer using the links in the sidebar (.dmg, .zip, or .tgz), and follow the instructions below. For additional details, see the User Manual.
On Macintosh OS X, double click the disk image file (.dmg), and drag the Orient application onto the Applications folder icon, or to any other desired location. If you get an App Can’t Be Opened message, right-click on the Orient icon, and choose Open from the popup menu. OS X must be set to allow applications other than from the Mac App Store to be opened. To do so, open the System Preferences and the Security & Privacy option. Under General select Allow apps downloaded from: Anywhere.
On Windows, unzip the zip file (.zip) using the Extract All option, and drag the Orient application (Orient.exe) to any desired location. Make sure to entirely extract the Orient application from inside the .zip file, this is the most common installation problem.
Orient comes with numerous tutorials in the User Manual to get you up to speed quickly. The Example Data folder should also be copied for use in the tutorials. To deinstall simply delete the Orient application folder, and optionally the preference file. No other files are installed on your computer. No administrative permissions are required to install Orient, and it is possible to keep a copy on a thumb drive to run on any computer.
Orient comes with numerous tutorials in the User Manual to get you up to speed Orient is flexible, easy to use, delivers the highest quality professional contour plots and graphics, and is completely free. Orient is the result of countless hours of work over three decades, and the only stipulation is that use of the software in analyzing data or preparing diagrams must be cited in publications, presentations, reports, or other works. Please see the User Manual for additional details and license.
Orient 3.4.2 was used for the workshop Analysis, Statistics, and Presentation of Geological Spherical Directional Data using Orient at the 2016 Structural Geology and Tectonics Forum held at Sonoma State University, California, on August 4th, 2016. Many thanks to the participants!