MountainsMap®: the gold standard for surface analysis

MountainsMap® calculates roughness and texture parameters according to international standards for both 2D profiles and 3D (areal) surfaces. Supported standards include ISO 21920, ISO 4287, ISO 12085, ISO 13565, ASME B46.1, and VDA.

• Analyze key profile parameters like Ra, Rq, Rsk, Rku, RSm, Rz, RPc, and Rmr as well as functional parameters such as Rk, Rpk, Rvk.
• For surfaces, calculate ISO 25178-compliant parameters including Sa, Sq, Sz, Sdq, Sdr, Vmp, and Vmc.
• Easily switch between primary, waviness and filtered profiles or surfaces to meet quality control and R&D requirements.

Read more about surface texture

Easily pre-process your surface data using advanced filtering and form removal tools.

• Apply S-filter and L-filter in accordance with ISO 16610, using Gaussian, robust Gaussian, spline or morphological filters. Legacy RC2 filters are also supported.
• Carry out F- operatione. form removal and surface leveling using polynomial, cylindrical or spherical shapes, via least squares or total least squares fitting, minimum zone or manual definition using cursors. NB. Application of an F-operator is essential and must be performed prior to any other metrological operation – read more.

Ensure the accuracy of optical surface measurements with MountainsMap®’s correction tools.

• Detect and remove outliers (may appear as “spikes”).
• Fill non-measured points
• Threshold low-intensity points.
• Eliminate noise.

These preprocessing steps are essential when working with interferometric, confocal or focus variation data and help prepare your measurements for precise surface texture analysis.

Go beyond roughness with MountainsMap®’s powerful tools for functional surface characterization.

• Calculate the volume of voids or material above or below a reference plane to evaluate surface functionality.
• Determine Abbott-Firestone bearing area ratios, lubrication volumes or displaced material, which are crucial in applications like tribology, wear resistance and sealing.

The software also supports comparative studies (e.g., before/after treatment), making it easy to assess how surface modifications impact functional performance. These analyses help engineers design better surfaces for real-world mechanical and functional performance.

MountainsMap® detects and qualifies structures such as particles, pores, grains, scratches and MEMS patterns. Ideal for quality control in semiconductor, medical and automotive industries.

• Choose from several detection methods depending on nature of the sample.
• Use automatic watershed segmentation to isolate features, then analyze them using ISO 25178-2:2021 feature parameters (depth, volume, shape, etc.).
• Classify features by size, shape, user-defined criteria etc. and generate detailed statistics including control charts, histograms and scatter plots.

Additionally, tools for automated partitioning, surface geometry control (e.g. step heights) and structure detection enable powerful, repeatable characterization of micro-patterned surfaces or functional textures.

With automatic, interactive GD&T tools, MountainsMap® enables dimensional analysis on height profiles (XZ) or 2D contours (XY) extracted from 3D surfaces. Users can ensure manufacturing precision with accurate, standard-based geometric verification.

• Apply tolerances as defined by ISO 1101.
• Evaluate dimensions, angles, diameters, radii, positions and form deviations.
• Compare measurements to CAD references.
• Apply tolerancing on arcs, segments, ellipses and circles. Specify large positional tolerances if required.
• Visualize form deviations easily with magnified graphics.
• Automatically generate a table of results including pass/fail status.
• Analyze complex geometries such as gothic arches (on bearings) or V-grooves – useful for fiber optics and worm gear inspection.

Read more:

• Contour analysis
• Advanced contour analysis

Explore the frequency content of your surfaces with MountainsMap®’s spectral analysis tools. Detect dominant spatial frequencies, analyze periodic structures and evaluate texture orientation.

• Use ISO 10110-8-compliant Power Spectral Density (PSD) tools to characterize surface behavior by studying the magnitude of the power density for each frequency of your surface.
• Apply autocorrelation to find repeating patterns on a profile or surface.
• Calculate isotropy, directionality and periodicity: view dominant surface directions on a compass rose and calculate parameters.
• Denoise surfaces using the FFT plot editor.

Ideal for identifying process signatures, assessing performance of optics or diagnosing machining defects, spectral tools add a powerful dimension to your surface analysis workflow.

Read more about spectral analysis

Understand the complexity of surfaces at different spatial scales with MountainsMap®’s multi-scale analysis tools.

• Decompose your surface or profile using wavelet transforms or narrow bandpass filters to separate features by size, distinguishing form, waviness and roughness components.
• Perform geometric fractal analysis using methods like scale-sensitive fractal analysis (SSFA) or tools formerly contained in Sfrax software to evaluate surface behavior across scales and quantify surface irregularities. Read more

These tools are essential for applications in functional surface design, helping engineers and researchers assess how surface properties evolve at different scales.

MountainsMap® supports the analysis of freeform surfaces – known as “shells” in the software – typically represented by triangular meshes. This is useful in applications such as additive manufacturing.

• Load, visualize and analyze freeform surfaces (shells) including STL, OBJ, PLY & 3MF files
• Clean up data before analysis: remove outliers, remesh, filter and smooth mesh.
• Fit geometric shapes or align the mesh with CAD models for precise comparison and generation of deviations.
• Perform metrological analysis: calculate freeform surface texture parameters such as height, hybrid/spatial and volume parameters.
• Visualize surface curvature and deviation as colors in 3D

NB. Shells can be extracted from tomographic data (cubes) or obtained from multiple surface acquisitions.

Point cloud data can also be visualized and analyzed:

• Reassemble fragmented scans and merge multiple point clouds into single datasets.
• Mesh point clouds.

Read more about shells

Easily combine multiple measurements into a seamless composite with MountainsMap®’s stitching tools.

• Perform XY stitching of scans with overlapping zones or vertical (Z) stitching to extend measurement depth. This is particularly useful for large-area or high-resolution topography.
• Perform 3D stitching (with Shell topography module) and generate a 3D point cloud and/or shell (freeform surface).
• For microfabricated surfaces such as MEMS, partition a single measurement into individual elements to analyze each component separately. This feature serves semiconductor inspection applications.