Vis5D Documentation Vis5D Documentation Table of Contents 1. Overview of Vis5D......................................................................................................7 1.1. Vis5d+...............................................................................................................8 1.2. Vis5D Documentation on the Web....................................................................9 2. System Requirements and Installation ..................................................................10 2.1. System Requirements......................................................................................10 2.2. Installing Vis5D ..............................................................................................11 2.2.1. Mesa.....................................................................................................11 2.2.2. NetCDF (optional) ...............................................................................12 2.2.3. Vis5d+..................................................................................................13 2.2.4. Manifest ...............................................................................................17 2.2.5. Customizing .........................................................................................20 3. Putting Your Data Into Vis5D.................................................................................21 3.1. Converting Your Data to v5d Format..............................................................22 3.2. Map Projections and Vertical Coordinate Systems.........................................37 3.2.1. Map projections ...................................................................................37 3.2.1.1. Generic rectilinear.....................................................................38 3.2.1.2. Rectilinear lat/lon (cylindrical equidistant) ..............................38 3.2.1.3. Lambert conformal....................................................................39 3.2.1.4. Azimuthal Stereographic ..........................................................41 3.2.1.5. Rotated rectilinear lat/lon..........................................................41 3.2.2. Vertical coordinate systems..................................................................43 3.2.2.1. Equally spaced, generic units:...................................................43 3.2.2.2. Equally spaced, kilometers .......................................................43 3.2.2.3. Unequally spaced, kilometers ...................................................44 3.2.2.4. Unequally spaced, millibars......................................................45 3.3. Special Variables and Data Values..................................................................46 3.4. User Defined File Formats..............................................................................47 3.5. Getting Irregular Data into Vis5D...................................................................48 4. McIDAS 3D Grid Data Files ...................................................................................50 4.1. Putting Your Data into a McIDAS 3D Grid File.............................................51 3 4.2. Using the McIDAS Utilities............................................................................59 5. Vis5D Utilities...........................................................................................................64 6. Using Vis5D to Visualize Your Data .......................................................................68 6.1. Starting vis5d ..................................................................................................68 6.2. The Control Panel ...........................................................................................76 6.3. Controlling vis5d ............................................................................................79 6.4. Viewing Modes ...............................................................................................84 6.5. Isosurfaces.......................................................................................................85 6.5.1. Isosurface Color...................................................................................86 6.6. Slices...............................................................................................................86 6.6.1. Contour Line Slices..............................................................................87 6.6.2. Colored Slices ......................................................................................88 6.6.3. Wind Vector Slices...............................................................................89 6.6.4. Wind Stream Slices..............................................................................89 6.6.5. Slice colors...........................................................................................90 6.7. Volume Rendering ..........................................................................................90 6.8. Wind Trajectories............................................................................................91 6.9. Wind Variables................................................................................................93 6.10. Text Labels....................................................................................................94 6.11. Data Probe.....................................................................................................95 6.12. Vertical Sounding and SkewT.......................................................................95 6.13. Making New Variables..................................................................................96 6.13.1. Cloned Variables ................................................................................97 6.13.2. Type-in Formulas ...............................................................................97 6.13.3. External Analysis Functions ............................................................100 6.14. Saving Image Files and Printing .................................................................101 6.15. Texture mapping .........................................................................................103 6.16. Tcl scripting ................................................................................................104 6.17. Keyboard Functions ....................................................................................105 6.18. The Clipping Planes....................................................................................106 6.19. Grouping .....................................................................................................106 6.20. The Display Widget Window......................................................................108 6.20.1. Changing the Number of Displays...................................................108 4 6.20.2. Changing the Display Assignment of a Data Set.............................109 6.20.3. Changing the Parameters of a Display.............................................109 6.20.4. Changing the ’Options’ for a Display..............................................109 6.21. Saving the current v5d file ..........................................................................110 6.22. Viewing Text Plots ......................................................................................110 6.23. Final Notes..................................................................................................110 7. The v5dimport Utility............................................................................................112 7.1. Using v5dimport’s graphical interface ........................................................112 7.1.1. Reading input grids............................................................................113 7.1.2. Selecting grids for output...................................................................114 7.1.3. Defining the output file ......................................................................115 7.1.4. Making the output file........................................................................115 7.1.5. Miscellaneous ....................................................................................116 7.2. The v5dimport User Interface Embedded in Vis5D .....................................116 7.3. Using v5dimport’s text interface .................................................................117 7.4. Adding support for new file format ..............................................................119 7.5. Notes on specific file formats........................................................................119 8. Sample Data Sets....................................................................................................121 8.1. Bob Schlesinger’s thunderstorm simulation .................................................121 8.2. LAMPS model ..............................................................................................121 8.3. Example McIDAS files and utilities .............................................................122 9. Version History.......................................................................................................124 10. License and Copyright.........................................................................................132 5 List of Tables 2-1. Programs (in prefix/bin):....................................................................................17 2-2. Libraries (in prefix/lib):.....................................................................................18