Vis5D Documentation
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# Vis5D Utilities

Vis5D includes a number of utility programs. This section describes each one. The v5dimport program is described separately in chapter 7.

- v5dinfo Usage: v5dinfo file

  Description: v5dinfo prints information about the given v5d file such as the size of the 3-D grid, the number of time steps, the names of the variables, etc.

  This program will also work on comp5d files. Therefore, the old compinfo program has been removed.

- v5dstats Usage: v5dstats file

  Description: v5dstats prints simple statistical information about the grid data in the named v5d file. Again, comp5d files are also accepted.

- v5dedit Usage: v5dedit file.v5d

  Description: v5dedit allows you to change header information such as the map projection, vertical coordinate system and variables names in the named file. It is an interacive, menu-driven program and is intended to be self explanatory. This program does NOT work with comp5d files.

- v5dappend Usage: v5dappend [-var] [...] file.v5d [...] target.v5d

  Description: v5dappend allows you to append a number of v5d files together to make one larger file. This might be useful if your weather model generates a separate `.v5d` file for each timestep because you'll want to join those files together to view the data in vis5d.

  The arguments are, in order:

  1. An optional list of variables to omit from the output file. For example, if you want to omit the variables U and THETA you would use the arguments `-U` and `-THETA`.

  2. The list of v5d files to append onto the target file.

  3. The name of the target v5d file to create (if it doesn't exit) or append onto (if the target file already exists).

  Note that the dimensions of the grids (rows, columns and levels) must be the same in each file to append them together. The map projection and vertical coordinate system information will be taken from the first input file and ignored the the remaining files.

- gr3d_to_v5d Usage: gr3d_to_v5d N M file.v5d C

  Description: gr3d_to_v5d converts (a) McIDAS GR3D file(s) to a v5d file. N is a number which indicates the name of the first grid file, M is the number of grid files to convert, `file.v5d` is the name of the file to produce, and C is 1, 2 or 4 to indicate how many bytes per grid point to use for compression (the default is 1).

  Example: if N=20 and M=4 then the files GR3D0020, GR3D0021, GR3D0022, and GR3D0023 will be read an converted to the named `file.v5d`.

- igg3d Usage: igg3d ...

  Description: igg3d is used to perform a variety of manipulations on McIDAS GR3D files. See section 4.2 for more details.

- igu3d Usage: igu3d ...

  Description: igu3d is a utility to perform a variety of manipulations on McIDAS GR3D files. See section 4.2 for more details.

- gg3d Usage: gg3d ...

  Description: gg3d is a utility for resampling McIDAS GR3D files. See section 4.2 for more details.

- listfonts Usage: listfonts

  Description: listfonts, used on SGI systems only, lists the IRIS GL fonts available for use in vis5d's 3-D window. After listing the fonts you may use one in vis5d by specifying it with the `-font` option. For non-SGI systems or systems using OpenGL, use the xlsfonts or xfontsel program to select a font.

- comp5d Usage: comp5d N M filename

  Description: comp5d converts one or more McIDAS GR3D files to the comp5d format used in previous (and the current) versions of vis5d.

  N is the first 3D grid file number and M is the number of grid files in the data set. The M parameter allows data sets which span multiple grid files and should not be confused with the total number of 3D grids in the data set.

  filename is the name of the compressed grid file. You can choose whatever name you want, but note that comp5d will convert the name to all upper case characters.

  If your data set contains wind vector components you can use the `-wind` keyword to select a subset of wind components or calculate horizontal wind speed, named 'SPD ', for the compressed file. The longitude, latitude, and vertical components of the wind vector must be named 'U ', 'V ' and 'W ' respectively. If you use the `-wind` keyword, then only those wind-relevant variables (i.e. U, V, W & SPD) whose names are listed after `-wind` will be included in the compressed file. For example, to include SPD and W in the compressed file, from a 3D grid file containing U, V and W components, use the command:

  comp5d N M F -wind SPD W

- help Usage: help utilityname

  Description: The help command will list a quick reference to the parameter formats for the named utility such as igg3d, igu3d, gg3d, and comp5d utilities.

  Example: help igg3d

- `maketopo.c`

  This program, found in the util directory, is a template program for generating your own new topography (*.TOPO) files. Read the information at the top of the file for instructions. To compile maketopo see the makefile named `maketopo.m`.

- `makemap.c`

  This program, found in the util directory, is a template program for generating your own new McIDAS map outline (OUTL*) files. Read the information at the top of the file for instructions. To compile makemap see the makefile named `makemap.m`. If you create a map with lots too many line segments, it will be displayed with some line segments missing and some extra crazy line segments. You can fix this by increasing MAXMAPVERT and MAXMAPSEG in `src/globals.h`, then re-making vis5d.

- `newmap.c`

  This program and `mapfunc.f`, found in the util directory, is used to transform the vertices of an existing map outline file to make a new map outline file. This might be useful if you need to transform a map to a new coordinate system. Read the `newmap.c` and `newmap.m` files for more information.

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