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To demonstrate the layout facility in Metview, let's re-create the above plot.     The Display Window icon allows us to design a layout, and also to choose the size of the page (e.g. A4).  

Instantiate a new Display Window icon and edit it. This is what you are aiming forwill produce over the next few steps:

Click on the Add new frame button to create the first frame. By default, this contains just a single plot scene which uses a Geographic View. Select (left-click) this plot scene and click Expand selected frames to make it fill the whole area. Divide it up into three areas as follows:

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If you look at the Frames and, more interestingly, the Layers tabs, you will see that they are linked to only one of these scenes at a time. Try using the Active scene control to change which on one is used (you can visually highlight the active scene from the View menu). You can also right-click on a scene and choose “Select as active scene” from the context menu. You can also visually highlight the active scene from the View menu.

Generate a macro from this plot by clicking on the Generate macro button in the toolbar. This is a great way to interactively design a plot layout and then create a macro which uses it. To run it on a day-to-day basis, probably only the data file reading step would probably have to be modified.

Legend   

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The result shows a default legend sitting at the top of the plot. Let's move the plot legend into a column at the right of the map. Create a new Legend icon and rename it to legmap legright. Edit it, and set:

Drop it into the Display Window to see the result.

We can also manually set the position of the legend by setting the following parameters, noting that the position of the legend is specified in cm from the bottom-left corner of the page, and that the default page size is A4 (29.7cm x 21cm):

Note that the direction of the legend, by default, is computed automatically depending on the longest dimension of its positional box  It can also be manually set in the Legend icon.

Annotation View   

The Annotation View icon provides a container for user-defined text boxes. This Viewview can also be used for layout purposes - if no user text is defined then an empty box will be created in the Display Window / paper sheet.

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• duplicate the note1 icon and rename it to note2.
• customise it by changing for instance the font style and size (remember to re-define an appropriate text box).
• drag it into the Display Window.

Extra work

Create an A3 version of your plot layout

Copy your Display Window icon from the 3-plot layout exercise and change its paper size to A3 (page setup button).

Create a custom size plot, projection Mollweide

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At global size, the Mollweide map is much wider than it is high. Create a new Display Window and experiment with a custom paper size until most of the white space has been removed from around the plot.

Customise the size of the

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map/view area

The exercise given in the Legend section above has a hidden feature related to the value 27.4 assigned to parameter Legend X Box Position in the icon legmap. This value was carefully chosen to allow the legend box to cover completely the latitude labels on the right automatic placement of the legend may not always be perfect for your particular plot. When we set the legend to be on the right-hand side of the map. Change this value to 27, for instance, and check the result. One possible solution to avoid this issue is to reduce the width of the mapping area; thus, giving more space to draw the legend box.

Redo the Legend section's exercise by reducing the width of the mapping area (the "subpage").

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, there may not have been enough room for it. We can fix this by reducing the amount of space that the map takes up. Each view icon has a set of parameters to set the size and placement of the "subarea". This is the area on the physical page occupied by the view. These parameters are defined in percentage of the page size. Try setting Subpage X Length to 80, then plot some shaded data and apply your legright icon to it to confirm that it now fits better.

Re-create the following plot:

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Create a layout with 5 Vertical Profile views, each showing a profile for a different location. Arrange the views any way you wish.e