[IDV #MFF-186404]: Drawing single states, counties, or zones

Hi Becky-


> > No way at present.
> >
> >
> Good, that means I didn't miss anything.  ;-)
> >> In McIDAS, you can say MAP STATE=IL and it plots just a map of Illinois on
> >> the currently navigated frame.
> >>
> >
> > The McIDAS MAP command uses a different set of files than the OUTL*
> > files when you use the STATE, MARINE, ZONE or COUNTY keywords.  Currently,
> > there is no support for these McIDAS  .MAP files.  Maybe a task for Mc-V?
> > Is there any documentation on these files?
> >
> >
> The reason I started looking at this was because the software we use to
> convert the shape files from NWS (http://www.weather.gov/geodata/) to
> the McIDAS .MAP files is broken, and I was wondering if we should fix
> that software or just put the plotting of individual states, counties,
> or zones on the list for Mc-V development.  I think we're leaning
> towards doing this in Mc-V.

It seems like you want to do both since you'll still have McIDAS around
and having the latest outlines is critical to people who use them 
(like PAWS).

> The other thing we use these .MAP files for is for plotting weather
> watches and warnings.  Have you put any thought into putting that
> functionality into IDV?

We always think about it. ;-)  But, if you've ever looked at WWDISP,
it'd be quite a job to recast that in Java.

> IDV can now plot shape files as maps, but I don't know how much effort
> it would take to be able to plot the shape files from a watch/warning
> chooser.   NWS now updates these polygon shape files online every minute
> and I was able to plot a tornado warning shape file as a map in
> McIDAS-V, so getting real-time data does not seem to be an issue -
> http://www.nws.noaa.gov/regsci/gis/shapefiles/   However, I haven't seen
> a mention of any sort of archive for these files.  Reading NOAAPORT text
> data from McIDAS-V like WWDISP now does will no doubt be more complicated.

From the IDV catalog at:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/georesources/idvcatalog.xml

you can access the NWS watch and warning shapefiles and plot them in
the IDV.  The problem is that we don't associate time with these.  There
is no "standard" for names of the attributes in a shapefile and we haven't
taken the plunge to hardcode the use of the ones in these shapefiles since
they are still verging on experimental.

> I can't find any official documentation for these .MAP files, other than
> pawing through the McIDAS code.

That's too bad.  I think this was something Pyeatt did.

Don

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: MFF-186404
Department: Support IDV
Priority: Normal
Status: Open