McIDAS-V Survey
13 October 2014 (LG version)
Thank you for taking time to complete this survey regarding McIDAS-V.
McIDAS-V is a free, open source, visualization and data analysis software package
that is the fifth generation in the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) 40year history of development and support of sophisticated McIDAS (Man computer
Interactive Data Access System) software packages. McIDAS-V displays weather
satellite and other geophysical data in 2- and 3-dimensions, and can be used to
analyze and manipulate the data with its powerful mathematical functions. More
information is available at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/software/v/.
The purpose of this survey is to gather information on:
 The usage of McIDAS-V inside and outside SSEC,
 The most important features offered by McIDAS-V,
 Other software packages which overlap with McIDAS-V functionality.
Questions:
1. Who do you work for? (Check one)
o University or college
o US government agency or laboratory
o Foreign government agency or laboratory
o Private industry
o Other [ enter name of employer ]
2. Do you work for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and
Engineering Center (SSEC)? (Yes or No)
3. Do you use computer software to visualize and/or analyze satellite image, model,
radar, or other related data as part of your work? (Yes or No)
4. What other software applications (other than McIDAS-V) do you use for data
visualization and analysis? (Check all that apply)
o McIDAS-X
o IDL
o ENVI
o Matlab
o Python
o Fortran
o C/C++
o Java
o Bash or other UNIX shell
o Other [ enter name(s) of other software applications ]
5. Is your employer a member of the McIDAS Users’ Group? (Yes or No)
6. Did you know about McIDAS-V before taking this survey? (Yes or No)
7. Have you ever used McIDAS-V? (Yes or No)
If you answered Yes to question 7, please answer the remaining questions.
8. How often do you use McIDAS-V? (Check one)
o Daily
o Weekly
o Monthly
o Rarely
9. How many people in your organization use McIDAS-V? (Check one)
o Just me
o 2 - 10
o > 10
9. If you answered ‘Rarely’ in the previous question, why don’t you use McIDAS-V
more frequently? (Check all that apply)
o The project ended
o Can’t read my dataset
o Uses too many computer resources (e.g., memory)
o Too difficult to automate my processing
o Could not run my processing in the background
o No particular reason
o Other [ enter reason(s) for not using McIDAS-V more frequently ]
10. What do you use McIDAS-V for? (Check all that apply)
o Geostationary satellite data display
o Polar satellite data display
o Radar data display
o Model data display
o Observational data display
o Hyperspectral data display
o 3D data display
o Data analysis
o Creation of images for the web
o Other [ enter other tasks ]
11. Which of the following features of McIDAS-V are important for your work?
(Check all that apply).
o Freely available
o
o
o
o
o
o
Open source
Java based
Built on IDV and VisAD
Jython scripting
Bundles
Other [ enter other features ]
Send survey to :
everyone@ssec.wisc.edu,
everyone@aos.ssec.wisc.edu,
CCR,
Nelson Institute,
itwg mailing list (itwg@ssec.wisc.edu)
GOES-R-AIT mailing list (?)
STAR (list from Ingrid?)
mcidas-users,
mug-sites,
McV Forum,
NASA list?,
AMS list?
AGU list?