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Another great feature introduced in CDAT 4.3 is the ability to lock (or pin down) and unlock any dimension. This is done by clicking on the little pin icon at the top of each axis dimension on the left side of the dimensions navigation sliders.  When you click on the pin, all the settings for this dimension will be saved as default to use for all other variables that have this dimension. In this way you can choose a region you want to look at by selecting the region with the sliders, then pushing the pin in (clicking the pin) and freezing that dimension. Now no matter what variable you will choose next or even different file, different variable with this dimension, you will  always see the plot  for your selected, frozen region. With the pin in (the settings frozen as default) you can still move the sliders and zoom in and  out, change  the region etc., but this will not affect the default setting that you set when you push the pin in.

Often one needs to look at the zoom of a particular dimension, say only a window in time, or particular region in (lon, lat) space or particular height region. You will now have the ability to choose say a height region, lock the height dimension, and now whenever you plot any variable that has this dimention, it will be displayed within chosen height region only. If you are curious to see the full height but do not want to reset the new default, you can move the sliders without unlocking the height dimensions settings.  If on the other hand you want to reset the defaults, just unlock the lock and choose new region, then lock the dim again to keep it as new default.  You will find it extremelly handy at times. The locks work also on the dimensions/axis order and are very handy when you need to change the pressure levels to be displayed from highest to lowest.

Let's see how it works.

variable. Let's select a boxfill plot

Let's now move the longitude sliders to span (-180,0), then click on the pin next to the longitude axis (notice the pin in the different direction then other pins - it is pinned):

 

 and select a boxfill plot

 

Now choose a different file 'geo.1deg.ctl' and select 'orog' orography variable, and plot boxfill

 
You can see that the plot is over the previously selected region. Let's now change the region to (0,180) without touching the pin,  see the resulting plot:

But now if we will choose a different variable and plot it, the longitude region will be set to the previously selected (-180,0)  

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