PyNcView - a new NetCDF viewer
Jorn Bruggeman
We invite anyone to try the beta version of PyNcView - a new NetCDF viewer.
This is a spin-off of the GOTM-GUI project, and offers similar plotting
functionality, sufficiently advanced to generate publication-quality images.
For instance: http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/users/jbrugg/X_V.png
---
PyNcView is downloadable here as Windows binary:
http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/users/jbrugg/pyncview.zip (114 MB)
You can simply extract the ZIP file to any location, and then execute
pyncview.exe in the extracted pyncview directory. No administrator
privileges are needed.
---
Linux/Mac OS users can try the Python script:
ftp://bbh.homelinux.net/pub/jorn.bruggeman/pyncview.py
For Linux/Mac OS, the first step [required] is to get GOTM-GUI up and
running - if that works, running pyncview.py is not difficult.
---
PyNcView features the following:
- You can graphically explore all NetCDF details, such as file and variable
attributes. To do this, right-click on corresponding nodes in the tree.
- You can plot mathematical expressions of NetCDF variables, somewhat
similar to (but still much more limited than) Ferret. For instance,
"sqrt(uu**2+vv**2)" to get the horizontal velocity.
- GOTM/GETM/MOM4 coordinate transformations are automatically recognized and
applied (e.g., Cartesian/curvilinear -> spherical, time- and space-varying
depth)
- you can manually re-assign coordinate dimensions to other variables,
allowing you to switch e.g. from spherical to Cartesian coordinates in GETM
files. To do this, right-click the file (root) in the tree.
- You can use map projections and overlay coastlines if coordinates are
longitude/latitude. To do this, activate the "plot as map" option under the
plot properties.
- You can create animations on-screen by slicing through a dimension, and
(optionally) automatically save stills as PNG to generate movies with
another application.
---
Some things worth remarking:
- The Windows binary is very large, mostly due to the inclusion of the
coastline database from MatPlotLib's basemap toolkit (168 MB uncompressed).
If there is the demand, we may ultimately also offer a lighter version
without coastlines.
- This is a beta version that has been shown to work with several different
nc files from e.g. GOTM, GETM, ERA-40. However, it is obviously not
guaranteed with all nc files out there (but ultimately it should for all nc
files meeting the COARDS or CF convention)
- While we will do our best to fix bugs, this is still a spinoff and not a
project with the greatest priority - you might have to be patient a bit.
---
Comments and suggestions are very welcome!
Cheers,
Jorn
Karsten Bolding
On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 11:16:54 +0100, Jorn Bruggeman wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
<snip>
> ---
>
> PyNcView is downloadable here as Windows binary:
>
> http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/users/jbrugg/pyncview.zip (114 MB)
>
> You can simply extract the ZIP file to any location, and then execute
> pyncview.exe in the extracted pyncview directory. No administrator
> privileges are needed.
>
> ---
>
The main reason for the very large file is that a high resolution
shore-line is included in the download - right Jorn?
Karsten
Jorn Bruggeman
> shore-line is included in the download - right Jorn?
True - in uncompressed form the shore-line data comprises 164 MB, out of a
total of 222 MB. That still means that the program without shore-lines is a
non-negligible 58 MB, relating to the large list of Python modules included
(PyQt4, basemap, matplotlib, numpy, etc.).
Jorn
Jorn Bruggeman
There is already a new version of PyNcView online:
http://www.bio.vu.nl/thb/users/jbrugg/pyncview.zip for Windows
ftp://bbh.homelinux.net/pub/jorn.bruggeman/pyncview.py for other platforms
This version should fix two bugs: (1) the program did not run from a
non-ASCII path (some directories on Chinese systems), (2) the "About..."
dialog with diagnostic information did not show (Windows only).
Thanks to Zhiyu Liu for reporting these issues.
In the future, please send comments, suggestions and bug reports to the GOTM
mailing list (gotm-...@googlegroups.com) - pyncview and GOTM-GUI are very
closely related, making the GOTM list a good place for feedback for now.
If the Windows binary fails, error messages will be written to
pyncview.exe.log in the pyncview directory - please include the contents of
this file with your bug report. If you are running the developers version
(pyncview.py script), please include the diagnostic information listed in
the "Help"->"About..." dialog.
Cheers,
Jorn
Karsten Bolding
Just to show support for different versions of the software PyNcView
depends on:
Ubuntu 8.10:
kb@orca:~$ uname -a
Linux orca 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 19:33:20 UTC 2008 i686
GNU/Linux
GOTM-GUI libraries: /home/kb/GOTM/v4.1.x/gui.py
Module versions:
Python 2.5.2 final 0
Qt4 4.4.3
PyQt4 4.4.3
numpy 1.1.1
matplotlib 0.98.3
basemap 0.99.1
Scientific 2.4.11
Ubuntu 9.04 (alpha):
kb@shark:~$ uname -a
Linux shark 2.6.28-10-generic #33-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 17 12:27:50 UTC
2009 i686 GNU/Linux
GOTM-GUI libraries: /home/kb/GOTM/v4.1.x//gui.py
Module versions:
Python 2.6.1 final 0
Qt4 4.5.0
PyQt4 4.4.4
numpy 1.2.1
matplotlib 0.98.5.2
basemap 0.99.3
netCDF4 0.7.7
note it uses the python NetCDF4 implementation by Jeffrey Whitaker -
http://code.google.com/p/netcdf4-python/
Works also on 64bit Vista Ultimate :-)
Karsten