Regularly spaced XYZ data can be converted to a grid file with little to no interpolation in Surfer using the Nearest Neighbor gridding method.  This may be useful if you have a dense regularly space dataset that you want to view raw before editing or smoothing the data for display.

 

How to grid your regularly spaced data:

Before you get started, make sure you know the spacing of the data you're working with.  This is the distance between each XY point when viewed as a post map or the mode if calculated via statistics.

1. Click Home | Grid Data | Grid Data.
2. In the Grid Data dialog, click Browse under Dataset 1
3. In the Open Data dialog, select your data file and click Open.
4. Verify the X, Y, and Z columns are assigned correctly.
5. Click Nearest Neighbor under Gridding Method.
6. Click Skip to End.
7. On the Grid Data - Nearest Neighbor - Output page, enter the Spacing of the input data.
8. Click the folder icon in the Output Grid field to choose a name and location for the grid file.
9. Click Finish.

Since the grid nodes will lie exactly on the data points, no interpolation will take place.