Introduction

Ncview is designed to be the fastest way to see what's in a netCDF file. Of course I'm biased since I wrote the thing, but I think everybody who works with netCDF files can benefit from having ncview in their toolkit. Ncview doesn't replace existing analysis packages, such as IDL, NCL, Matlab, Ferret, or R; instead it supplements them by providing a quick and easy way to get an enormous amount of information from your netCDF file.

Think of ncview as being like the blurb on the back cover of a book. If you glance at the blurb you'll have a good idea whether to buy the book and spend your valuable time reading it. Likewise, flying through a netCDF file with ncview will give you a good indication of whether it's worth your time to analyze it with a complete analysis package.


Where to go from here

  • See a screeshot of ncview in action.

  • Download the source for ncview. Note that your Linux distribution might have an ncview package already available for it.

  • Quick introduction: Everything you need to know to get working in 5 minutes.

  • A few more features that will save you time.

  • Advanced features: ncview displays your netCDF files as quickly as possible, but does have some advanced capabilities.

  • Customizing: It's straightforward to add your own colormaps or coastlines to ncview.