Hi Justin,
> I'm creating netCDF files (from the .NET framework on Windows XP32/2K).
>
> I need to create a netCDF file containing 12 arrays of floats each of them
> four dimensional. It works fine until I make these 4D arrays of the
> following dimensional sizes:
>
> 15 x 150 x 150 x 150
>
> then I get the following error:
>
> "One or more variable sizes violate format constraints"
>
> ...although it works fine with:
>
> 14 x 150 x 150 x 150
>
> Obviously from the error message it seems like I am just trying to get the
> netCDF DLL I am using to allocate too much space or something along those
> lines. What I'd like to know is WHY there is this limitation and what can be
> done, if anything, to overcome this problem.
>
> I don't think I can change the way in which the data is structured since the
> files are opened in another application I have no control over. I'd like to
> know what it is about the way netCDF is written that creates this
> limitation. Or is it perhaps a Windows problem? Maybe the situation would
> improve with Win XP64 (although this is not a viable option at the moment
> due to our client's IT department's strategy)?
Please read the section of the NetCDF User's Guide on "Large File
Support". An online version is here:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/docs/netcdf/Large-File-Support.html
More relevant information is available in the "Large File Support"
section of the netCDF FAQ:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/docs/faq.html#lfs
_From your description it sounds like you probably just need to use the
netCDF 64-bit offset format for your file, which means you need to
provide an extra flag when you create the file, since the 64-bit
offset format is not used by default. With the CDL for your file
schema (generated by invoking "ncdump -h FILE", for example) it would
be possible to determine more exactly what caused the error message.
Finally, we recommend that specific questions like this should usually
be sent to support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx rather than to the netcdfgroup
mailing list, which is intended for announcements and discussion of
issues of general interest to netCDF users. But in this case, the
answer to your question may be of general interest, since the error
message you saw is new with the most recent general release of netCDF
software (version 3.6).
--Russ
_____________________________________________________________________
Russ Rew UCAR Unidata Program
russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.unidata.ucar.edu
