PLOTTS

Basic Information

Name of Program

plotts

Version-Date

October 2016

Description-Date

October 2016

Catchwords

Matlab
timeseries
CF NetCDF Format
MATLAB

Acknowledgment: This project took advantage of netCDF software developed by UCAR/Unidata (www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/).

Short Description of Functionality

The application plotts can be used to visualize timeseries from netcdf-files. Originally developed for visualisation of timeseries from delWAQ-netcdf-files, plotts is able to visualize timeseries from Untrim-netcdf-files, dataconvert-netcdf-files and netcdf-files from ncanalyse. Since plotts is programmed in a general way, it might be possible that it can handle even more netcdf-files. The application plotts is started from the Linux-Terminal and takes the word "runfile" followed by a control file as arguments. For example:

plotts runfile run01.dat

This call runs plotts using the parameters that are defined in the text file run01.dat.

The control file consists of one or multiple BEGINDATA Timeseries blocks. The only necessary parameters in the control file are the name and path of the netcdf file and the variable that the user would like to have displayed.

Possible statements in the control file are listed in the following

BEGINDATA Timeseries
filename={path and filename}
variable={variable name}
timeperiodstart={DD.MM.YYYY-hh:mm:ss}
timeperiodend={DD.MM.YYYY-hh:mm:ss}
lon={longitude}
lat={latitude}
z={depth}
positionsfromfile={path and filename}
ylabeltext={y axis label}
legendentry={legend entry}
ylabelfontsize={y axis fontsize}
tickfontsize={font size of the number along the axis}
legendfontsize={legend fontsize}
legendlocation={Location of the legend: north south east west northeast northwest southeast southwest northoutside southoutside eastoutside westoutside northeastoutside northwestoutside southeastoutside southwestoutside best bestoutside none}
linecolor={line color: yellow magenta cyan red green blue white black}
linestyle={line style: - -- : -.}
marker={additional markers in the line: * + - none}
showtimeonx={1: show time additional to date on x axis, 0: no time}
plottogethergroup={Identifier for the definition of a group of timeseries which should be plotted together}
ENDDATA

The position defintion can be done by single numbers or a arrays for lon and lat or by specifying a netcdf files, that holds the positions as x,y,z - variabels. This is the case for boewrt-files that are converted using DATACONVERT, that are concatenated using the nco tools or NCRCATMAT to one netcdf-file.

To display more than one timeseries into one plot, multiple BEGINDATA Timeseries blocks can be used in the control file. Which of the Timeseries are plotted together can be defined by using a common identifier for the plottogethergroup. If the first BEGINDATA Timeseries block for example contains plottogethergroup=A, all Timeseries blocks which contain plottogethergroup=A as well are plotted on the same axis.

Input-Files

1. Control file as given under PLOTTS.DAT and stated above.
2. Files of netcdf type

Output-Files

The displayed figure can be saved in the following formats (*.PNG,*.FIG).

Methodology

The dimensions and their order of the variables are determined by the standard names in the netcdf file.

Program(s) to run before this Program

DATACONVERT, UNTRIM, DelWAQ, NCANALYSE, NCDELTA

Program(s) to run after this Program

MATLABFIGVIEWER

Additional Information

Language

MATLAB

Additional software

Linux: MATLAB Compiler Runtime MCR R2015a in directory /usr/local/MATLAB/R2015a

Original Version

L. Nickelsen

Maintenance

L. Nickelsen, T. Brodhagen

Documentation/Literature

http://de.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/openfig.html
See also under MATLAB.

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