Gplates .rot error message

[abbzcreates]

I’ve been following Artifexian’s guide for worldbuilding with the simulator and I’ve tried this about 5 different times but the .rot file is not working.

What can I do to fix this?

[abbzcreates]

wouldn’t allow me to include this

[chhei]

Hi @abbzcreates

firstly, you should chose a plain text editor for editing your rotation files - looks like you’re using TextEdit on the Mac. This is a rich text editor which writes out files that are not plain text/ASCII. There’s a few choices you have to fix this:

• VS Codium - a FOSS version of MS VS Code
• VS Code MS code editor
• BBEdit - one of the oldest Text/Code Editors on the Mac
• TextMate - working but no longer developed
• vi, NeoVim etc: command line editors (not for the faint hearted ) that you can open using a Terminal.

Once you have such an editor set up, you should put something like this into your rotation file:

The general rotation file format syntax is:

MovingPlateID Time PoleLat PoleLon PoleAngle FixedPlateID

so in your case this would be:

200     0.0  90.0 0.0 0.0    0 
200  1000.0  90.0 0.0 0.0    0
600     0.0  90.0 0.0 0.0    0 
600  1000.0  90.0 0.0 0.0    0
100     0.0  90.0 0.0 0.0  200
100  1000.0  90.0 0.0 0.0  200
400     0.0  90.0 0.0 0.0  600
400  1000.0  90.0 0.0 0.0  600

etc…

Note that you can also chose to construct a rotation file in GPlates from scratch (ie without any files loaded) by going to Features → View total reconstruction sequence → Then click on New sequence, put in your moving/fixed plate and the rotation steps (like you have in your screenshot). Then click Next → highlight Create new feature collection and click on Create. Open the Feature Manager (CTRL+m) and save your new feature collection somewhere on disk as *.rot or *.grot file. This should give you a starting point. Make sure to open that file in a plain text editor (see above…).

Cheers,
Christian

[abbzcreates]

Thank you so much for your help! I got it working!

[Lizzy]

hello, i 2 have been following Artifexian’s guide, and I’m struggling with .rot files. I’m on windows and have gone through loads of options and googling to see how to change a notepad .txt to a .rot and haven’t found anything. there is one lady i found who was working g plates on a windows but the video was 9 years old and also it was a class tutorial, so the files were already linked, she didn’t show how to make the files. through reading this i was able to make the animation and instuctions run inglates no outside .txt or .rot files needed. thank you.
for anyone else like me, on windows and struggling to get it to run, u can run it all in app no outside stuff hope it saves u some stress. love gplates, thx guys for an awesome aplication.

[chhei]

@Lizzy

I’m on windows and have gone through loads of options and googling to see how to change a notepad .txt to a .rot and haven’t found anything.

Unless I completely misunderstood what you’re after: If this only concerns the file suffix it is probably the easiest in Windows Explorer, with the file highlighted to hit F2 (Rename) and instead of a .txt suffix, just use *.rot in there. Windows will likely complain but as you’re just changing the file suffix this doesn’t matter.

Otherwise the instructions above should explain how to set up a rotation file from scratch (both on Windows or Mac). As Windows’ built-in Notepad app sucks, I suggest to use something like Notepad++ or VSCode (see link above).

Christian

[Ari]

Great news! There is a way to convert the file into an rot from Text Document in Windows.

Right click the Text Document File → Hover Over Compress to... → Then click on Additional options.
Under Files will be added to this archive: remove .txt and any following text → Then add .rot at the end → click Create

This should duplicate it as a ROT file.

Before adding the file, try opening in your NotePad. If it pulls up as random symbols, don’t fret. Simply paste the information from the original Text Document → Save.

Now you have a usable ROT file! You can now follow the remaining steps from the video series to open the file in GPlates.

Hope this helps!
(Sorry, still new so I can’t include screenshots just yet. Let me know if any of the steps are unclear.)

[chhei]

@Ari

please see my post above. No need to make things more complicated than necessary.

1. Rotation files are commonly plain-text ASCII files which can be edited with a text editor (not a word processor that does formatting). Win Notepad, Notepad++, VisualStudio Code, VS Codium, neovim, vim are the weapons of choice here. Explicitly NOT MS Word, Textpad and the likes.
2. If you have a rotation file that ends in *.txt and you want it to be ending in *.rot or *.grot, simply rename it in the OS of your choice (Finder on Mac, Win explorer on Win). I’d think that GPlates would even read a rotation file if it ends in *.txt as long as the formatting of the file is correct (not tested).