Script: diamondbar.gs; Draw a colorbar using diamond shapes on your plots.

I have not added anything to this blog as of late, I have been busy with a number of different projects including my participation in the OWLeS field project.  Recently I have seen a few presentations that showed figures that had color bars made up of diamonds rather than rectangles (see below).  I figured it might be fun to put together a quick script that allows you to do this in GrADS.

Colorbar with diamonds using diamondbar.gs

Example usage:
            'diamondbar -r -marg 0.1 -font 0.09 -fs 2'

This is the call used to plot the colorbar on the above example. 

Options:        -help           - Pulls up this Help Page
                       -loc             - Chooses location for the colorbar (r=right-vertical,                                                                            l=left-vertical, b=bottom-horizontal,t=top-horizontal)                                                                             can also be called by (-l,-r,-b,-t)'
                        -size/s        - sets size of each diamond, defaults to "auto"
                        -marg            - sets margin to axis
                        -fs/int         - sets the interval for each number plotted along the colorbar
                        -font/fontsize  - sets the font size of the numbers
                        -scol           - sets the color of the numbers
                        -line           - draws outline around each diamond if included  


Anyway, I had some free time recently, and I got inspired to write a new script, so I quickly put together this script.  I haven't used it too much, but I certainly see how and where it could be useful, perhaps to add a little flare to your figures.  Enjoy!  And as always, report any bugs!

Note:  The example script will generate the plot above and requires the script color.gs

Download diamondbar.gs

Download Example Script