Generic MD to NetCDF converter

[TJS]

I understand we are still at beta, but could there be a generic application that reads mcidas MDs and builds a netcdf. The idea is to be able to get MD info into mcidas-V.

Thanks.

[tomw]

Since there is already code in McV to read MD files (via ADDE), I think we should work toward enabling the particulars of the metadata contained in the MD files people want to use. The issues for some of the files we've looked at seem to center on inconsistent names for key parameters like day, time, lat, lon. In addition, we will have to continue to work to resolve issues of units, since most of the units in MD files are non-compliant.

[howardb]

I've figured out how to read McIDAS area files through ADDE in McV, but how does one read MD files using ADDE? I didn't notice that as one of the options.

[jayh]

Hi Howard... We've been playing with this here as far as reading MD files directly in -V. I am able to use the real time MD data servers from the Data Center, but when I use some of our testing machines that we have set up to serve the MD files "remotely," then all I get is errors like "can't handle date/time units" or "Files not valid to use with POSITION 0." These are the same errors I see in -X when using relative position numbers with the datasets. We will need some more development in -V to get around that. I'll write that inquiry, and also will play a little more to see if there is a workaround. However, at first glance, we don't see one.

Thanks, Jay