Images received from spacecraft normally do not contain any coasts or country boundaries, and also lack other geopolitical details. Nevertheless, it is quite useful to have this information available on the image as it renders it easier to pick out locations and areas of interest.

Through the Image Grid option, it is possible to add some predefined grid information to the received
images. To do this, on the right hand control panel under “grid” click Wdb Cfg (World Data Base Configuration).

The following screen will appear:

Two methods are available to enable the grid overlay over the images:

• A “local” configuration
• A “global” configuration
  

All information is saved in a file, named WDB.CFG, which can be saved in the “loop” configuration subdirectory
(allowing “local” configuration) or in the default running directory (allowing “global” configuration). The software gives priority to the local configuration if present. If no WDB.CFG file is found in the “loop” configuration subdirectory, then the global configuration file WDB.CFG in the default running directory will be used.

This two methods solution permits a standard overlay display for most of the loops and specific overlay
display for user defined “special” loops. The user has also the option to choose the color of the pen tracing the different components of the grids. By selecting the button “Choose Colors” the following window appears:

The user has the possibility to select independent colors for tracing grid components under black/white, color enhancement, bit slicing, sea mask, and true color presentation. Each color can be customized by clicking on the field and using either the slider or a pre-determined hex code, as well as the opacity percentage:

Static Grids

There are four possible selection boxes for the static grid (World Data Base), these are:

• Boundaries (country borders);
• Rivers;
• Coast Island and Lakes;
• Custom (Any).
  

The first three selections are the standard selection for the world data base, the last one (Custom) is user defined data. Up to 11 different levels of data are supported for the “ANY” grid, permitting flexible overlay definition.

The “ANY” grid definition refers to the user text file “any.txt” in each world data base directory (Europe, Asia,
Africa, Namer and Samer). In this text file, the user can define polygonal lines and alphanumeric annotations
to be overlaid as part of the “static” grid. Further details are available under the Addendum Creation of custom Grid File Format.

Each selection box has a general enable checkbox and several “level” enable checkboxes. Select the desired checkboxes to enable the required grids and overlays, pressing the “Save” button to set the “local” configuration.

Dynamic Grids

To add “dynamic” grids to the image, the user should fill the edit box “Extra Grid”.

In this edit box the user can enter two possible data:

• a directory containing dynamically created text files defining grids to be overlaid to specific images (for
  example wind vectors or temperature), and/or
• a file name (including the directory name) defining some extra grid to be overlaid to all the pictures of the
  loop (for example warning messages).

In case both information are present, they must be separated by a comma ‘,’ without extra spaces. All extra grid text files contain the “level” information, the levels can be individually enabled or disabled using the same checkboxes of the “ANY” grid (the general enable of the ANY grids is instead disregarded for the extra grids, since the extra grids are enabled separately through the popup menu).

NOTE: since the ANY levels are used for both static and dynamic grids, it is advisable to reserve some levels for the static grid definition and the other levels to the dynamic grid definition (example: levels 1 to 5 for the dynamic grids, levels 6 to 11 for the static grids). This is not necessary if only one grid type is used (only static or only dynamic).

The format of data to be entered in the edit box is the following:

• Directory definition: the character ‘+’ immediately followed by the full path name using mapped drive or UNC convention. Example:

+\PDUS_SERVER\D\DATA\METEO\WINDS
The software will search in the defined directory for grid text files with the following name:
YYMMDDHH.mmC (example 03032512.30A) where:
YY are the last two digits of the year (03 = 2003 in example)
MM is the month number (starting from January = 01) (03 = March in example)
DD is the day of the month (day 25 in example)
HH is the hour (hour 12 in example)
mm is the minute (minute 30 in example)
C is any character (A in example)
The hour and minute specification should match the image reception standard time (for instance
every 30 minutes for PDUS images).

• File definition: the character ‘+’ immediately followed by the file name complete with path (mapped drive or UNC) and immediately followed by the character ‘.’. Example:

+\PDUS_SERVER\D\DATA\WARNING\MESSAGE.TXT.
Now the system knows which gridlines you want to add to the image, and is capable to extract this
information from the world data base and from the user defined grids. After the selection of the desired grid options and saving of the “local” or “global” configuration, the user should enable the “extra grid” (dynamic grids) if required and start the drawing of the grid.

To do so, select the second “View Grid” option in the grid dropdown to enable the dynamically created grids. If not needed, please verify that the “Extra Grids” is not selected.

Upon completion of this operation, the grid will be added to the image.

Further removal or addition of static grid information it is possible through the key F11 (toggle function).

The extra grid enable/disable operation is only possible through the toggle on the right-side grid menu.