CPLOT Software

By David Delene: Update August 30, 2007


CPLOT is a software program that quickly plots data from flights of the University of North Dakota's Citation research aircraft.  CPLOT is written in IDL which is a commercial software development package.  Anyone can run the program by downloading the cplot.sav file and using the IDL virtual machine.  No IDL license is needed to run CPLOT.


Download the cplot.sav file.

  1. Create a directory on your computer to save the "cplot.sav" file in, i.e. C:\Program Files\cplot.

  2. Downloaded the "cplot.sav" file from the following ftp site, ftp://cumulus.atmos.und.edu/software/cplot on to your computer, i.e. c:\Program Files\cplot.

Download and install the IDL virtual machine.

  1. The IDL virtual machine can be downloaded from http://www.ittvis.com/download/download.asp.  Note that the download file is very large. 

  2. Run the IDL installation program, i.e. idl64.exe
  3. Choose to install IDL.
  4. When asked, choose to install the "IDL Virtual Machine", you don't need the full "IDL" development package.
Create a shortcut on the desktop to start IDL.
  1. Right click on the desktop back ground
  2. Select New/shortcut
  3. Type in the following for the location (Assuming IDL6.4 was installed in the default location and the cplot.sav file was placed in c:\Program Files\cplot).  c:\RSI\IDL64ubin\bin.x86\idlrt.exe -vm="c:\Program Files\cplot\cplot.sav"