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Overview

In this session we will look at the various ways in which you can streamline how you work with Metview so that you can perform common tasks as quickly as possible.

Icon Drawers

At the bottom of the Metview user interface is an area known as the icon drawers. This is a tabbed area where you can store icons which you will use often. Some sample drawers are supplied when you first start up Metview, but you can remove these and/or add your own. Have a look to confirm that the same set of icons is available in these drawers no matter which folder you are currently looking at in Metview.

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Once you have some icons there, try plotting some data and using some of the icons in the drawers to enhance the plot.

Templates

Templates are similar to the icon drawers, but work a little differently. Create a new Contouring icon and edit it. Set Contour Shade to On. Open the Templates tab at the bottom of the editor. This is a place where you can store icons (specifically Contouring icons since this is the Contouring editor). To see how they work, do the following:

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This mechanism provides a way to quickly build up new icons based on selected sets of parameters. For example, you could have template icons which activate shading with a nice palette, or which set the grid value plotting without replacing the other parameters in your icon.

Defaults

Each time you perform actions (e.g. visualising some data) in Metview, some defaults will be used if you have not specified otherwise. For example, if you plot some data on a map, a default Coastlines icon will be used. You can change these defaults. For example, if you always want land and sea shading, then you can set up such a Coastlines icon as your default.

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