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Creating and Editing an Icon

Let’s customise the coastline plotting attributes.

First, create a new Coastlines icon. You can right-click within the Metview desktop to obtain a context menu from where the option Create new icon is available (shortcut: CTRL-N).

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This brings up a dialogue from where you can find the Coastlines icon; either double-click the icon, or drag it onto the desktop to create a new instance. Close the dialogue.

Edit the newly-created icon by either double-clicking on it or else right-click, edit (double-clicking an icon performs the edit action for most icon types). This brings up the icon editor for coastline plotting. All user-selectable parameters for plotting coastlines are here. Set the following parameters:

For colour-based parameters, there are two small arrows - the one on the right reveals a drop-down list of predefined colours (use this one); then one on the left reveals an advanced colour selection tool.

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After making these changes, click the Ok button to save and exit the editor.

Visualise the data again, and drag your new Coastlines icon into the Display Window.

Your Coastlines icon can be dragged into any plot, and later we’ll see how to store useful icons so that they can be easily accessed from anywhere.

Modifying Layers

Now look at the Layers tab again. Drag the shaded Coastlines layer so that it is above the t1000.grb layer – a quick way to mask out the sea points! Imagine looking down through the layers from the top to the bottom in order to understand how they work. You can also select the Coastlines layer and change its transparency value. You can also toggle layers on and off using the checkboxes next to them. Note that these adjustments are not carried through to the various export image formats (see later).

Future versions of Metview will incorporate more advanced plot-editing facilities available directly from the Layers tab. You can close the Display Window again.

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