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:
- Windows 2K/XP/2003: \Documents and Settings\[User name]\Application Data\CoastWatch
- Windows Vista/7/10: \Users\[User name]\AppData\Roaming\CoastWatch
- Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/CoastWatch
- Unix: ~/.coastwatch
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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