How to make a perfect horizontally map

[francoisborel]

Good Morning everyone,

After trying several things, i need to ask you this question.

I'm running on McIdas v1.6.

In my views, i display the latitude / longitudes lines. With a small area, all the lines appears horizontally. But in a largest view, the lines dropped down. I attach an exemple named Line_alizes.jpg.

I need to do the same thing, but in a perfect horizontally view. I attach the example from the NHC view, named Nhc_view.jpg.

I saw that i can "play" with the viewpoint toolbar but i'm unable to make a perfect horizontally view like the NHC picture.

Could you help me ?

I thank you a lot for your answer...

Have a nice week end

Cheers
françois

[bobc]

Hello françois -

From your image, I believe that the issue is that you aren't using a rectilinear projection, where there is even spacing between lat/lon lines. For example, if you display your satellite data with Auto-Set Projection enabled, the native projection of the satellite data will be applied and you likely won't be using a rectilinear projection.

To check this, you can change the projection in your display panel to Projections>Predefined>World. Once you zoom in, you should see an image more like the NHC image you attached. If you want to create your own lat/lon projection zoomed in over your area of interest, here's what you can do:

1. From the Main Display window, choose Projections>New/Edit.
2. In the Projection Manager, click the New button.
3. In the Define/Edit Projection window, make sure that "Lat/Lon" is selected as the Type. Left-click+drag the boxes of the rubber band box in the preview image to center it over your area of interest.
4. Enter a name of the projection into the Name field.
5. Click Save.

At this point, from the Main Display window, you can select Projections and you'll see the projection (named in step 4 above) in the list.

If this doesn't work, or if you have any questions, please let me know.

Thanks -
Bob Carp
McIDAS Help Desk

[francoisborel]

Good morning Bob

I thank you a lot for your clear answer. I was able to do the map without any trouble... YES !!!!!

BUT :

I have a problem that i had not meet before. I made my map and put for the label the Times New Roman font, type "Plain" and size "8".

This is the same parameter that the picture (mcidas) i attached on this post. But surprise, the label appears very big. I'm not able to put a small size for theses labels.

Do you know where i made a mistake ? For information, after your answer, i encoutered a problem and i had to reinstall McIdas.

Thank you a lot for this issue .. Cheers
François

[francoisborel]

On this picture, i put the same parameters that the Line_alizes.jpg attached before.
But all appears bigger..
François

[bobc]

Hi François -

I'm glad you were able to get your rectilinear projection working.

There have been others who have reported issues with font sizes in McIDAS-V as well. We have Inquiry 2298 written up to fix the sizes of font labels not being small enough. This inquiry specifically mentions that large display windows are more likely to show the problem. We also have Inquiry 1627 written up to cover a problem where lat/lon label size doesn't work as expected when a user has a default layout set.

In the past, I've found that the problem of large font sizes can be resolved by changing the order that things are done in the creation of the display. For example, I used to see large lat/lon labels if I started at the "World" projection, added my lat/lon labels, and then changed to a more zoomed in projection. To work around this, I would first set my display to the projection I wanted (and display the data) and then add the lat/lon labels last. I noticed that the first McIDAS-V image you attached had lat/lon labels properly-sized, so perhaps doing things in a different order may help.

Thanks -
Bob

[francoisborel]

Hello Bob

Yes, it works perfectly ... Wouaouu....
Thank you, thank you for all.

Have a nice week.

Cheers
FELIX