Earthquake File Selection Dialog

This dialog is called from the Earthquake dialog. The windows Open File dialog will be automatically called if the user doesn't specify a filename in the Earthquake dialog. The user then uses the familiar Windows file picking dialog to choose the right input motion file. It's also possible to type in the file name in a specified box on the dialog. A name without a path description is assumed to be in the same directory as the executable file of BiSpec.

After the file selection, the user should specify the format of the file. Currently only two formats are supported: The SAC format which applies to the SAC motions, and a User format, which is more general and can be defined. If the SAC format is chosen, the user can read the record and exit the dialog, the program will give an error message if the record is not read correctly. However the user should check the number of points read which the program reports to make sure the file was actually read. That's especially the case when the User option is picked.

With the User option, three parameters have to be supplied: Lines to skip, Number of points N, timestep dt, and Units. The first parameter is just the number of lines that should be skipped at the beginning of the file which could contain text description about the record, or other less relevant data. That's meant to avoid the inconvenience of having to delete those lines. The second parameter is the number of points to be read. The program will keep reading values from the file until this number is reached or the end of file reached whichever happens first. This can be used if the user is unsure of the number of points in the record. If the user specifies a larger number than the actual number of values in the file, this number will be replaced by the actual number of points read. Unreasonably high values of N should not be specified since the memory allocated is proportional to the number of points. Timestep dt, is the assumed sampling rate of the record. The units are the assumed units of the read values, which could be ft/sec2, in/sec2, mm/sec2, cm/sec2, m/sec2 or g.

The user could press on the "Read File" button that reads the file, then check that the file is read correctly and return to the previous dialog by press the "Return" button, or combine both steps by pressing "Read File and Return".