20050429: IDV - rays/track files in IDV

>From: "Greg Bensen" <address@hidden>
>Organization: UNAVCO
>Keywords: 200504291633.j3TGX5lx008208 IDV trajectories

Hi Greg-

>Institution: UNAVCO
>Package Version: 1.1
>Operating System: win XP
>Hardware Information: 768 M ram 
>Inquiry: Hi guys,
>
>We are trying to get rays to plot in the IDV.  Currently, I've gotten this to 
> work.  You can also get the file here
>
>http://geon.unavco.org/cgi-bin/opendap/nph-dods/data/rays/sample_ray_p3.nc.htm
> l

Geez, I didn't know you had temperature and mixing ratio data along
earthquake tracks. ;-)

>and see some of the metadata.  What we would like to do is plot tracks with on
> ly the lat/lon/level time and possibly velocity.  Don and I talked about this
>  briefly at the AGU meeting last fall.  If this is an easy change, it would b
> e great. 

If you read it in as a track file, one of the Fields is Point Display.
If you select this and select the "Point Data Plot" display type,
you can display the individual points and even animate them through
time.  You'll just need to create your own station model that would
plot the lat/lon/depth (and velocity) at each point and that should
give you what you are asking.  If you want to display all the
times at once, click on the "Show All Times at Once" checkbox
in the Station Model Display control window.  If you combine that
with the track colored by velocity, you'll see them plotted along
the track.

You can ask Stu Wier for help on creating station models since he's
been working with that a lot.

BTW, we are reworking how we handle trajectory data in the IDV and
if possible, it would be good for you to use the CF conventions
for your netCDF files.  In particular, if you use the CF convention
for trajectory:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata/CF-1.0.html#grid_ex5

(e.g., use the coordinates attribute on your velocity variable and
include the global attribute for specifying the convention) that
would make it more easily useable by the IDV and other netCDF viewers.
We don't yet support storing multiple trajectories in the same
file as specified at:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/eaton/cf-metadata/CF-1.0.html#lab

but will in the next version.

Don Murray
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