Hi Angela, It looks as if your data is on a regularly spaced grid, so the longitude and latitude points listed are not single axes but instead represent the whole grid. There are a couple ways to handle this. If you are doing just this one problem, and if the grid is regularly spaced, then a quick and easy way to define the right grid is to just look at your file and see what the axis definitions should be, and define the axes without specifically reading the coordinates into Ferret. This would go something like this: yes? define axis/x=-53:120:0.5/units=degrees xaxisIf you want a more general script, or if the spacing of the grid is not even, then you'll need to first use the data in the file to define the axes and then define a grid to read the data field. (Try LIST or PLOT commands with these different variables to see what we're doing here.) yes? file/var="xpoints,ypoints" myfile.txtI'll put this into an FAQ - seems like something people must run into all the time. AV Gallego-Sala wrote: Dear Ferret Users, I am new to Ferret and would be very grateful if somebody could help me with a "simple" problem. I am using FERRET v5.70 (alpha) on a Mac OS X 10.5.6 and I don't seem to be able to read a simple ascii file of the following kind: -53.500000 68.500000 0.99750608 -53.000000 68.500000 0.99756086 -52.500000 68.500000 0.99761266 -52.000000 68.500000 0.99761307 -51.500000 68.500000 0.99767214 -51.000000 68.500000 0.99771249 -50.500000 68.500000 0.0000000 where the first column is the longitude, the second is the latitude and the last is the variable (dryness index). I tried: FILE/VAR=xpoints,ypoints,dry filename DEFINE AXIS/from_data/X/name=xaxis/UNITS=degrees xpoints **ERROR: improper grid or axis definition: data for DEFINE AXIS/FROM_VARIABLE is not monotonic I then thought perhaps the longitude needs to be sorted monotonically, so I changed the file so that the longitude increased all the time, this worked for the x axis, but still got the same error for the y axis (which of course is not monotonic now): FILE/VAR=xpoints,ypoints,dry filename yes? DEFINE AXIS/from_data/X/name=xaxis/UNITS=degrees xpoints *** NOTE: Axis has repeated values -- micro-adjusting ... yes? DEFINE AXIS/from_data/Y/name=yaxis/UNITS=degrees ypoints **ERROR: improper grid or axis definition: data for DEFINE AXIS/FROM_VARIABLE is not monotonic Anybody has any suggestions? I will so very, very grateful! Cheers, Angela |