Plotting Options

The rendering of the wind pattern display when using Advanced Wind Estimation (AWE) is very time consuming as each location’s roughness index is calculated as determined by the wind direction. Run times of 20 minutes or more, depending on screen size, are not uncommon. 

To rectify this problem, we have created Pre-Processed RI (roughness index) files that will allow the rendering logic to bypass this lengthy roughness index calculation. This reduces the run-times from 20 minutes down to less than 1 minute. 

Unfortunately, these processed RI files are very large as all coastal states are represented by over 1 GB of data files. Rather than attempt to install or download all of these RI files (by state), the solution we have devised to allow the user to download RI files only for states that they will typically use the Wind Pattern feature.

There are only 2 options available on this screen. 

Use processed RI files - This option allows the user to turn on and off the option of using these processing RI files. The only advantage to not checking this option is that the resultant display is slightly smoother when allowing the system to calculate RI “on the fly”.

Download State Pre-Processed RI files – This selection opens an Internet Explorer (or whatever your default Internet Brower is) web page. You can download state files from this web page. Make sure you follow the directions exactly… particularly the message that indicates where (folder location) to save the file. Repeat this option for each state being downloaded. 

The list of states, with check boxes, indicates which states have already been downloaded.