CoastWatch Data Analysis Tool Help: User preferences and resources

In this section:

Preferences panel

Open the preferences panel by selecting the Tools→Preferences menu item.

General
Allows you to set the memory limits of the Java VM (the heap size), the amount of that heap to be used for caching data for display (the tile cache size), and the preferred format of latitude/longitude coordinate display.
Enhancement
Contains a list of variable names that store a preferred color enhancement range, palette, units, and function for each variable. When a data file is first opened, the enhancement preferences are used to setup the initial data view for each variable. To view the enhancement preferences for a variable, click the variable name from the Variables list. To change the preferences, select a new palette name from the Palettes list and/or modify the Minimum, Maximum, Units, or other controls. New variables may also be added and existing variables deleted using the Add and Remove buttons. To save changes to the preferences click OK, or Cancel to discard them.
Export
Contains the setting for the logo in the exported image. When exporting to image formats such as PNG or JPEG, the right side of the output image contains an information legend. By default a NOAA logo appears, but this setting allows for any logo that you choose.

Units conversion

For each data variable, CDAT allows you to specify your preferred display units in the enhancement preferences. Selecting Use units from data source leaves the data values in the same units as they were written. Selecting Display in units of makes CDAT read and convert data values on-the-fly to the new units. If you select your own data units, you should also adjust the minimum and maximum values.

To help with units conversion, a number of common units are provided in the drop-down units box. If your preferred units are not shown, you can also type in the units. Most common units are supported, and base units can be combined with spaces, slashes, and exponentiation. For example, wind speed in kilometers per hour could be written a number of ways:

km/h
km hr^-1
kilometers / hour
kilometers per hour

For other possible unit names, search for the UDUNITS package from UCAR:

https://www.google.com/search?q=udunits
https://www.google.com/search?q=udunits.txt

User-specific resources

Preferences are saved on a per-user basis to a special resources directory that is unique to each operating system. You can open the resources directory using the Tools→Preferences→Open User Resources Directory menu item to view the files and directories. For reference, the directory is located at:

This directory is created when CDAT is first run, and populated with the default preferences. The resources directory is also used to store user-specific customizations. The current customizations are as follows:

Overlay groups
Overlay groups are created and deleted using the Overlay Group controls in the overlays tab (see the Overlays section). Overlays groups are saved in the overlays subdirectory. An initial set of overlay groups is copied into the directory when CDAT is first run. Overlay groups may also be used for command line rendering using the --group option in the cwrender tool.
Palettes
In addition to the default set of palettes, you can create your own palette files and store them in the palettes subdirectory. Palette files have an XML format as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE palette SYSTEM 
"http://coastwatch.noaa.gov/xml/palette.dtd">

<palette name="MyColorPalette" length="256">
  <color r="255" g="0" b="72" />
  <color r="255" g="0" b="72" />
  ...
  <color r="255" g="170" b="0" />
</palette>
  

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