Display Settings

6.4 Display Settings

The Display Settings facility allows you to select a set of properties from a display control (e.g., color table, contouring info, isosurface value, label template, etc.) and apply them to other display controls and/or save them as preferences to be used when creating new display controls.

The Display Settings dialog, pictured below, can be brought up from a display control's Edit->Display Settings... menu or from the main Edit->Edit Display Settings... menu bar menu.

Image 1: Display Settings Dialog

On the left is a list of all of the source display controls in the IDV. In the middle are the properties of the currently selected display control which is shown highlighted in blue on the left. On the right is also a list of the display controls. These are the target display controls.

The idea is that you can select properties in the middle panel that you want to apply to the selected target display controls (via the checkboxes) on the right. Many of the properties can be changed by clicking on the buttons.

The View menu is a handy way of selecting different groups of target display controls. For example, you can select All Displays, displays of certain types, displays that have the same data sources, etc.

6.4.0 Display Settings Examples

For example, say you have two different data sources loaded with 3 or 4 displays created from each. Normally, the legend will list all of the displays based on some display category (e.g., Plan Views). However, you want to be able to change their display category so that each group of displays that are from one data source have the same category (e.g., "Data source 1", "Data source 2"). What you would do in this case is change the "Display Category" property under "Labels" to "Data Source 1".

Then, you could manually select the displays you want to change but an easier way is to use the menu and choose "Displays with data source ...":

This selects the displays with the data source of the currently selected display (on the left, highlighted in blue).

Once selected you then hit Apply. This will set the "Display Category" property on the selected display controls.

To do the next set of displays select a new Source display control in the list on the left. This will select this display and reset the properties list in the middle. Then when you do the Display Groups->Displays with data source the displays that share the data source from this new display will be selected.

6.4.1 Saving Display Settings

You can save the set of selected settings with the menu. The Save Settings dialog will be shown:

Image 4: Save Settings Dialog

You can enter a category and a name. The saved settings will be shown under the Saved Settings tab. These act just like the Source Displays. When selected they will be applied to the list of properties in the middle. The button, will be used when showing the saved settings in the Field Selector (described below).

6.4.2 Using Display Settings in the Field Selector

The set of saved display settings are also shown in the field selector:

Image 5: Display Settings in Field Selector

You can select any number of these and, when a new display control is created, these settings will be applied to the new display. The check box allows you to list all of the settings, regardless if they were saved off for a particular type of display.

Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer > Tools