# Multi-dimensional netCDF file visualization

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/multi-dimensional-netcdf-file-visualization/746
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [October 17, 2018, 4:52am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/multi-dimensional-netcdf-file-visualization/746 "2018-10-17T04:52:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![banesullivan](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/banesullivan/32/11714_2.png) [@banesullivan](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/banesullivan)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2018, 7:15pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/multi-dimensional-netcdf-file-visualization/746/2 "2018-10-21T19:15:26Z")

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Hi @ZiweiWu,

I too work with netCDF4 and HDF5 files quite often and I have been working to develop a new set of Python-based plugins for reading these data formats directly into ParaView. This set of plugins is an offshoot of my [PVGeo](http://pvgeo.org) project called [PVGeo-HDF5](https://github.com/OpenGeoVis/PVGeo-HDF5) which creates an easy to use framework for making a file reader for just about any data format in netCDF or HDF files.

So to anwser your questions:

1. Yes! Checkout [PVGeo-HDF5](https://github.com/OpenGeoVis/PVGeo-HDF5) (in very, very early stages of development). I used this to address [another question here](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/reading-particle-trajectory-data-into-paraview/712).
2. I’m pretty sure you cannot do anything like this using ParaView’s native netCDF readers. But you could easily implement a reader in PVGeo-HDF to handle this.

_Note: I see you are on Linux; PVGeo and PVGeo-HDF5 have an issue on Linux and requires users to build ParaView from source because of [this issue](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/issues/88)_

I could help you implement a simple reader for the CMAQ netCDF file format within PVGeo-HDF5 if you’re up for getting your hands dirty! I tried playing around with your sample file but I don’t really understand the format… There are these data arrays present but I don’t really understand the data array shapes (especially since the time array (`'TFLAG'` is all zeros):

```auto
<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
int32 TFLAG(TSTEP, VAR, DATE-TIME)
    units: <YYYYDDD,HHMMSS>
    long_name: TFLAG           
    var_desc: Timestep-valid flags: (1) YYYYDDD or (2) HHMMSS                                
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 9, 2)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 LATD(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: LATD            
    units: DEGREES         
    var_desc: latitude (south negative) -- dot point                                          
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 LOND(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: LOND            
    units: DEGREES         
    var_desc: longitude (west negative) -- dot point                                          
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 MSFD2(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: MSFD2           
    units: (M/M)**2        
    var_desc: squared map-scale factor (DOT)                                                  
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 LATU(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: LATU            
    units: DEGREES         
    var_desc: latitude (south negative) -- U face                                             
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 LONU(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: LONU            
    units: DEGREES         
    var_desc: longitude (west negative) -- U face                                             
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 MSFU2(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: MSFU2           
    units: (M/M)**2        
    var_desc: squared map-scale factor (U FACE)                                               
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 LATV(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: LATV            
    units: DEGREES         
    var_desc: latitude (south negative) -- V face                                             
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 LONV(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: LONV            
    units: DEGREES         
    var_desc: longitude (west negative) -- V face                                             
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

<class 'netCDF4._netCDF4.Variable'>
float32 MSFV2(TSTEP, LAY, ROW, COL)
    long_name: MSFV2           
    units: (M/M)**2        
    var_desc: squared map-scale factor (V FACE)                                               
unlimited dimensions: 
current shape = (1, 1, 786, 973)
filling off

```

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