This software package has been created for generating grids for WAVEWATCH III using MATLAB. This
package has been developed and tested on MATLAB v7 or higher.

Documentation : Documentation is available at three levels. First, is the grid generation 
                manual -- grid_generation.pdf -- that is included with the release of the 
                software. The second, are the comments in the master scripts that explain
                what the individual parts of the code are doing. And finally, there are 
                brief explainations in each subroutine that can be read from the MATLAB
                workspace by typing help <name>, where <name> is the subroutine. (NOTE: The
                path to the subroutines should be set when trying this option).

Dependency    : Matlab and netcdf routines for matlab. 
                Netcdf toolbox for Matlab can be obtained from (http://mexcdf.sourceforge.net/)
                (NOTE: Netcdf toolbox is only used for reading the global bathymetry data files
                 If you have your own independent set of routines for reading netcdf files then 
                 only a few lines need to be changed in the 'generate_grid.m' routine. These lines
                 have been marked)

Files         :  There are 3 sub-directories
                   bin/            -- this stores all the scripts used in the grid generation routine
                   examples/       -- this stores 2 examples of master scripts that call the different
                                      subroutines for creating grids. An example for a regional grid and
                                      a global grid (which has some differences) have been shown, as well
                                      as a script that is used to modify the traditional land - sea mask for
                                      WAVE WATCH III to one for the multi-grid version (version 3.10 and 
                                      higher). This is done for the regional grid assuming that it would
                                      be nested with the global grid in the multi-grid version
                   reference_data/ -- this stores all the reference data that is needed for creating grids
                                      and includes two global grids, GSHHS shoreline polygon database and 
                                      an optional user defined polygon database (combined with a flag file
                                      that determines which of these polygons are to be used) for masking
                                      out water bodies that do not play a critical role in wave propagation

Addendums     : 1. The generate_grid function now has two extra parameters that need to be set before the call can
                   be made -- a cut-off depth and a representative depth for dry cells.
                2. Matlab now has built in support for NETCDF and those have been incorporated in the generate_grid.m 
                   routine
                3. A series of bugs were cleaned up. These are 
                   a) Getting rid of spurious NaN values in generate_grid
                   b) Changing the algorithm in compute_boundary to remove errors associated with improper
                      closing of certain boundaries
                   c) Speed up in the clean_mask routine
                   d) Generating grids only in the 0 - 360 lon range (this is the range in which the 
                      boundaries are defined, and switching to -180 - 180 range was leading to improper
                      treatment of boundary closure in certain cases.
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Last updated  : 10/24/2012
Bug reports   : arun.chawla@noaa.gov