I am looking to quantify the surface roughness parameters of some of rock grain samples I recently analysed with an optical profilometer. The information that was obtained from the equipment was stored in .DAT file extension. I need to extract the xyz data from these.
I would appreciate any helpful insights on how to go about this.
.dat format can contain anything, it is not standard. There are a few ways to extract xyz data from the files:
- open them with profilometer's software and export the coordinates;
- open the files with Notepad or other simple text editor, sometimes .dat files have self-evident format (coordinates and other data as conventional text strings);
- open them with HEX-editor and try to understand the data structures;
- write to developers with this question.
Good luck!
Open dat file with Excel, you will be asked about the type of data separators: tab, backspace etc. Choose proper one that was used in your dat file. You will see resulting file formating while testing the variants.
Some times "," should be changed to "." with ctrl+F operation.
In addition to Denis' and Grigory's posts, here is an example of .DAT file format. Follow TRIOPTICS, Blümel et al., "Knowledge Base: File Formats used for Data Export and Import", 2012 - http://www.trioptics.berlin/downloads/load_file.php?path=intern/content03_knowledgebase&file=KB_FileFormats.pdf
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