PSYCHROMETRICS for Engineers

Custom data files for BinMaker® PRO

Background information

This product provides weather data files on CD that can be used within the BinMaker PRO program. These are data files only, created in a specific format to be used within the software BinMaker® PRO (BMPro) via the custom file feature.

BMPro’s custom file feature must read data files from a hard drive, not a CD. The CD contains the setup file for a program that will help you copy the files from the CD to the location on your hard drive that you want them. The name of this program is “BMCFiles”. You must install BMCFiles to your hard drive before you can use it. Follow the instructions below for installation.

Installation

Insert the CD into your CDRom drive. Open the drive and run the program “Setup.exe”.

The setup program will by default install the BMCFiles to the same folder that the BMPro setup program installed to by default. It is recommended that BMCFiles be installed in the same folder as BMPro.

Using the BMCFiles program

After starting the BMCFiles program. There are four steps to copying files from the CD to your hard drive:

Identify the location where you want the files you are copying to be stored on your hard drive.
Identify the files that you want copied.
Choose the file naming format for the copied files.
Copy the files.

All four steps are show and operated from a single screen…

Step 1. Choose the location on your computer to store the custom file(s).
Use the drive and folder list boxes to identify the location. Make sure to double click a folder in the folder list box to select it. The Copy to field below the folder list box shows the currently selected location.

Step 2. Choose the file(s) you want to copy.
BMPro custom files must be either English (I-P) or metric (SI) units of measure. Therefore this CD contains two files for each location; one in I-P and one in SI. These are stored in separate folders on the CD. When copying files please keep in mind that you need the I-P version of the file to bin in I-P units. Similarly the SI file is needed to bin in SI units.

Next use the drop-down boxes to choose dataset, country, province and location. Some customers may have purchased this software with multiple datasets such as “Canadian” and “International”. The program will only show you the datasets that are available on the CD.

There are three check boxes that help you copy multiple files from a group. For example if you want to copy all the files from the current dataset simply click the “All from this dataset” checkbox. If a checkbox is grayed-out it simply means that selection is not currently applicable.

Step 3. Choose the file name format for the copied files
This option allows you to choose between to options. The first creates datafiles on your hard drive with names that describe the subject location. The second simply saves files using their identifying number. Note that all IP units file names will end with “_IP” and all SI unit file names will end with “_SI”. All files are saved with the “BMC” extension which is recognized by BMPro as a custom data file.

Step 4. Copy the custom files to my hard drive now.
Click this button to start the copying process. Before the copying actually begins BMCFiles will check that your inputs are complete and acceptable and that there is adequate space on the hard drive for the selected file(s). When the copying actually starts a progress bar will appear at the bottom of the screen and a text message will show the number of files to be copied the number that have been copied. When the number copied equals the number to be copied the process is complete. The copy process is very quick and should take less than a minute in most cases.