Comparison plot involving an unsmry file and a text file with values for a FIELD entity does not work.

Problem:

I load an unsmry file into Tecplot RS 2010 and then load an ascii formatted txt file, and try to make a comparison plot of the two, Tecplot RS 2010 does not show the comparison plot I was expecting.   Why does this happen?

Solution:

The Generic ASCII format is only intended to support wells. It has no way to specify that the entities are of a specific type.  An unsmry file can have data relating to many different entities (FIELDS, GROUPS/AREAS etc).  So when one of these text files, and a unsmry file are loaded into Tecplot RS 2010, and the user tries to make a  comparison plot,  Tecplot RS 2010 considers the entities in the text file wells and if it does not find corresponding well entities in the unsmry it will not make a comparison plot.

The best way to make your comparisons in Tecplot RS 2010 is to load your text file into Excel and convert it to CHEARS CSV format. The conversion involves the following steps:

1. Date or Time is required in the first column. If you use Date be sure that the year includes four digits, rather than just two.
2. Change the WELLNAME column title to just NAME.
3. Add a Category column, that describes the type of entity.
4. After editing the file, write it out as a .csv file. In order for Tecplot RS 2010 to identify a file of this type, the name of this file must have the form: _prd.csv.

NOTE: The _prd at the end of the filename is the key to identifying this type of file.

Then you can load the CHEARS.csv file by choosing Load XY Data form the Project menu, and setting the file type to Individual Files, and clicking the Browse button.  In the Open Files dialog, set the File Type (in the lower right corner) to CHEARS CSV, and then select your file.