About McIDAS McIDAS-V | |||||||||||||
McIDAS-X
User Responses:
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Original Request: Do you a GUI with McIDAS? If yes, please read on. |
We use the gui mainly for the "shortcut buttons". The cursor probe with lat/lon and Brit/Temp info are also useful as well as the vcr buttons for frame control. It would be nice to have google-like navigation control for zoom-in/out and panning capability. Louis Nguyen - NASA-Langley |
2 best features: Tim Schmit - SSEC |
The command history is very nice. Initializing SERVERTABLE.TDAT Jim Nelson - SSEC |
The best thing I like about the GUI is the fact I can look through the command history (which is important to my uses) easily. Haven't really encountered anything that I don't like. William Straka - SSEC |
Brian Hoeth, from the Spaceflight Meteorology
Group (SMG) at When the first McIDAS GUI came out we adopted the concept and built a tailored ‘toolbar’ that allowed the SMG forecasters to select pre-loaded loops, ‘standard’ displays and tools to support their mission. When the current version of the McIDAS GUI came out, SMG requested that we ‘integrate’ our ‘toolbar’ back into the McIDAS standard. What we developed was a series of configuration files and scripts that allow a forecaster to sit at a workstation and select a ‘personality’ or ‘functional or positional role (i.e. forecasting for CONUS sites or forecasting for overseas sites)’ that is used to configure a series of buttons into the McIDAS GUI’s ‘shortcut’ buttons. Several buttons are standardized across functions, such as custom enhancements, specialized data displays, or printer functions. One is position-dependent, giving access to the pre-loaded image loops for the specific area of interest. Each of the buttons is built into the McIDAS shortcut system as a call to a ‘code-generator’ TCL application that uses a configuration file to build a mcwish menu GUI ‘on-the-fly’, presenting the user with a custom menu. This was done to allow the users to rapidly build any menu that they wanted and reconfigure without requiring software support. Custom menus for individuals can be easily built and incorporated into the standard McIDAS GUI as well. Brice Biggerstaff - Johnson Space Center |
I
will reply from the operational user perspective and then
I’ll let our software developers answer regarding the
extensive changes they made to the GUI. Do
we use the GUI? Yes. As
of last year, when our software developers integrated our “custom
toolbar” into the McIDAS core GUI. What
we like about the GUI, in no particular order
(1)
List
-> Command History is very useful so you don’t hit shift-7
and shift-6 until you’re blue in the face!
(2)
Configure
-> Scheduler is GREAT because you can modify ANY ASPECT of
the McIDAS scheduler entries. Used to be that the only
thing you could change with the SKU CHA command was the command
itself, you couldn’t modify the date, time, etc. Also,
just having a point and click interface to the McIDAS scheduler
makes it so easy that even a lead forecaster can now enter a
SKED entry with little effort instead of trying to remember how
to use all the keywords necessary with SKE.
(3)
Lat/lon
and Temp readout, although I wish the Temp readout was in Celsius
instead of Kelvin and I wish these readouts worked when looping
is ON instead of only working when the loop is OFF.
(4)
Display
-> Image is a pretty nice interface to IMGDISP. Being
able to define your own “box” with the Location tab
is cool.
(5)
Display
-> Grid is a decent interface to GRDDISP. Not quite
as nice as the AWIPS volume browser, but definitely better than
typing.
(6)
Configure
-> Graphics Parameters is a wonderful interface to GU. It
allows you to easily turn graphics colors on/off and to change
colors to different colors. One problem that we’ve
run into with this though is that this interface seems to link
up to the IMAGE frame instead of the GRAPHICS frame and since
we run independent graphics, this is a problem unless we have
our IMAGE and GRAPHICS synced up (not always the case).
(7)
Zooming
IN and OUT with the magnifying glasses and the 1:1 button. Much
easier than having to use ZM and Alt-Z in conjuction!
(8)
File-> ADDE
Servers is kinda nice. I have to try to train the lead
forecasters about DATALOC and DSINFO and this GUI tool makes
it much easier than trying to type the commands. I especially
like the “Flags” column because it tells you what
data types are available for each group.
(9)
The “Show
Frame” button is actually nice. SF is obviously easy
to type, however using the “Show Frame” button has
a nice feature in that it gives kind of an “inventory” of
what is on each frame. This is especially useful for us
when trying to find an “open frame” since we have
many frames that are dedicated to canned loops that are constantly
updated in the background. Again, unfortunately this is
not user friendly completely for us since we use independent
graphics. A “Show Graphic” button would be
nice.
(10)
Configure
-> Shortcut Buttons is nice, but it would be perfect if you
could create cascading menus! You can create one level
of a menu, but you cannot create sub-menus. To that end,
we had our software developers address this issue by integrating
our “custom toolbar” into the “User-defined
Button Toolbar”. As I said, I’ll let them give
the details on what they did. It’s nice, but it’s
still not perfect because the hope was that our “custom
toolbar” would work just like the Configure -> Shortcut
Buttons button in that it would be all button click configurable. Their
solution has made it such that our “custom toolbar” is
configurable, but you have to edit files manually (not desirable
for a lead forecaster). In general, as you can tell from some of my comments, the main disadvantage of some of the GUI is that it’s not independent graphics friendly. Brian Hoeth - Johnson Space Center |
The GUI is mainly used here for: James Kelly - Australian Bureau of Meteorology |
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Responses by Site:
Australia (1)
JSC (2)
NASA-Langley (1)
SSEC (3)