Descent and ascent rates

The Descent & Ascent section: set a single or multi-segment descent and the three ascent rates, and see which rate governs which part of the ascent.

Travel between depths takes time, that time is on-gassing, and the planner counts every minute of it. The Descent & Ascent section holds two separate cards: descent, which you can break into segments, and ascent, which is always three fixed phases.

Descent segments

The descent card is a table with three columns, From, To and Rate (m/min), and one row per segment. A new plan starts with a single segment, Surface (0 m) → Max Depth at 20 m/min. The last row’s To cell is fixed at Max Depth, so the descent stays valid when a level’s depth changes.

The descent card, as a new plan arrives

Descent

SurfaceMax Depth

Add Segment splits the descent. The existing segment is given a concrete end depth, halfway between where it starts and the plan’s maximum depth, and a new final segment is appended below it at the same rate.
From on each row is the previous row’s To, so the segments chain automatically.
Remove, at the end of a row, deletes that segment. Removing the last row hands Max Depth back to the row above, and a single-segment descent has no remove control.

The three ascent rates

The ascent card is fixed at three rows. Each governs a specific part of the ascent, and the planner selects between them by where you are. All are entered in metres per minute and must be positive.

The three ascent rates, at the figures the planner starts on

Ascent

Max DepthFirst Stop

First StopLast Stop

Last StopSurface

Max Depth → First Stop: the ascent from the deepest point until the first decompression stop is reached. On a dive with no stops it governs the whole ascent down to the last-stop depth. The planner starts at 9 m/min.
First Stop → Last Stop: travel between every pair of consecutive stops. The planner starts at 3 m/min.
Last Stop → Surface: the final ascent from the shallowest stop to the surface. The planner starts at 1 m/min. That ascent is decompression, not caution: the time counts toward off-gassing and appears in TTS.

Watch for

A rate above the value the planner treats as customary raises a warning: 20 m/min on any descent segment, 10 m/min from max depth to the first stop, 6 m/min between stops, and 3 m/min from the last stop to the surface. The warning does not change the schedule. See Warnings.
A bailout ascent travels at these same rates. The scenario the planner computes for a loop failure uses your ascent figures, not a faster set.

Environment and stops is the next section: where the dive happens, and the stop grid these rates travel between.