Golden Software Surfer Binary Grid Reader/Writer

Licensing options for this format begin with FME Desktop Professional Edition.

The Surfer® Binary Grid Reader/Writer allows FME to read and write data in Golden Software’s Surfer Binary Grid format.

Overview

Surfer is a contouring and 3D surface mapping program developed by Golden Software. Surfer Binary Grid is the binary version of one of the raster formats used by this product.

FME supports Surfer Binary Grid versions 6 and 7.

Reader Overview

FME considers a single Surfer Binary Grid file to be a dataset. Each dataset contains a single FME raster feature.

Writer Overview

FME considers a dataset to be a folder name.

The writer distinguishes duplicate output files by appending numbers to the filenames.

FME Raster Features

FME raster features represent raster data and use several concepts that are unlike those used in the handling of vector data. The topics below describe how FME processes raster data.

About FME Rasters	Tiling and Mosaicking
Raster Properties	Band Combining and Separating
Band Properties	Band and Palette Selection
Palette Properties	Raster Processing
Compression	Raster versus Vector Features
Pyramiding	Raster File Naming
Interleaving	World Files
Interpretation and Data Type	TAB Files
Palette Resolution

Surfer Binary Grid only supports rasters with a single numeric band.