PLOT3D Files

PLOT3D is a data directory which contains examples of files associated with the PLOT3D program. PLOT3D is actually a plotting program used to display the results of various physical calculations. There is no single file format. Instead, there are families of file types whose structure depends on the spatial dimension, time dependence, and dimensionality of the object being stored.

PLOT3D File Characteristics:

• ASCII or binary
• 1D, 2D, or 3D
• No compression
• Multiple auxilliary variables allowed
• 3D data can be stored as a whole, or grouped into planes.

PLOT3D files include X, XY and XYZ files, which contain coordinate information, an XYZB file, which contains 3D coordinates and blanking information which suppresses some locations, Q files which include the density scalar, momentum vector, and energy scalar at each coordinate location, and F files, which record a single scalar value at each coordinate.

Licensing:

The computer code and data files described and made available on this web page are distributed under the GNU LGPL license.

Reference:

1. Pamela Walatka, Pieter Buning, Larry Pierce, Patricia Elson,
   PLOT3D User's Guide,
   NASA TM 101067,
   March 1990.

Sample files:

• 3dm_q.dat, a large binary file of the Q format.
• 3dm_xyz.dat, a large binary file of the XYZ format.

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