Familiarize yourself with the Intermediate Files

As with the GRIB data files, it is good to know/understand what is written out to the intermediate files.

rd_intermediate.exe

This utility is available inside the WPS/util/ directory.
Given the name of a singe intermediate format file on the command line, the rd_intermediate.exe program prints information about the fields contained in the file, e.g.,

./util/rd_intermediate.exe FILE:2005-08-28_00

plotfmt.exe

This utility is available inside the WPS/util/ directory.
You will only be able to run this utility if you have NCAR Graphics installed on your computer.

The plotfmt.exe is an NCAR Graphics program that plots the contents of an intermediate format file. The program takes as its only command-line argument the name of the file to plot, and produces an NCAR Graphics metafile (gmeta), which contains contour plots of each field in input file. The graphics metafile output, gmeta, may be viewed with the idt command (an NCAR Graphics command).

./util/plotfmt.exe FILE:2005-08-28_00
idt gmeta

The idt command will bring up a graphical window with a video-type control (see below) to navigate through the frames in the gmeta file.