Producing high-quality wind maps

[Reuven Shenkar]

I hope I am not veering too much away from the forum's subject (I am talking about wind maps from WAsP after all).


Lately I have been doing my own little search, looking for a mapping software that can produce publication quality wind maps (from the GRD files exported from WAsP). By high quality I mean - as much control as possible of every graphical aspect of the map.


So far I have been using SAGA and QGIS. I found SAGA to be a wonderful tool that can do some sophisticated things with grids and shapes, but it is not a mapping software per se, and therefore lacks many features. Same goes for QGIS.


In the last few days I have been trying Global Mapper (which seems quite outdated, and the mapping facility is not up to my requirements) and Surfer 10, which at the moment seems to be the closest to what I am looking for. I know that the cutting edge in GIS are the ESRI tools (ArcGIS family), but it seems that they are way out of what I can afford at the moment.


Therefore, I would be happy to have some further opinions/recommendations and read about other user's experience.

[Niels Gylling Mortensen]

Surfer 10 can make some very pretty maps for you, with lots of control over the map details and layout. In addition, it will also do quite a bit of work for you on the input side of WAsP and WAsP Engineering; such as making elevation grids from irregularly spaced spot heights and height contours from elevation grids. Great value for the money.

[Reuven Shenkar]

Thanks, Niels. I have purchased Surfer 10 two weeks ago and indeed it is up to the task.