Creating Your Model Point Files

The model point file handling in Slope Software is very flexible and may be able to handle directly loading an existing extract from user systems.  Users should verify that the files and data to be used meet the following requirements.

File Types

CSV files contain data elements separated by a comma (,) character. These files can end with file extensions of .txt or .csv at the user’s discretion.

The file must contain exactly 1 header record which contains the names of the data columns. This header record is used to ensure the file contains the expected data specified in the model point file layout.  So the names in the header must match (case-insensitive) the names specified in the layout.  The order of the fields on the model point file does not matter. SLOPE will automatically find a match for each column based on the header row names. However, this does mean that header row names must be unique.

Slope supports any single character delimiter in a text file. When selecting a model point file that ends in .txt, you will be prompted to select a delimiter for reading the file.  All other data file requirements are the same as CSV files.

Excel files contain data in rows and columns within a single worksheet. These files can end with the Excel extensions of .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, or .xlsb.

The file must contain exactly 1 header row which must be on row 1 of the spreadsheet. This header row is used to ensure the file contains the expected data specified in the model point file layout.  So the names in the header must match (case-insensitive) the names specified in the layout. However, when using Excel files as input, the order of the columns does not matter. The Excel model point files can also contain extra columns with other data, even formulas, without impacting the projection process.

 

Excel model point files can contain as many worksheets as desired. When selecting an Excel file as the model point file for a projection, you will be required to select one worksheet to use as the input. Thus, it is possible to have a single Excel file that contains model point files for multiple Products and select one worksheet for each separate Product.

 

Any data containing a date in CSV or delimited text files must be in M/D/YYYY format.

Boolean data fields can be specified with values of 1 for TRUE and 0 for FALSE or can have the words ‘TRUE’ or ‘FALSE’ written out in plain text (case does not matter when using plain text).