Hi, John:
ok, yes this makes more sense now
     :H5_DimRank = 1, 5, 3, 4;
refers to h5dim_table 1, 4, 3, 5 ( 1 based)
and
   :H5_DimRank = 1, 5, 3
refers to h5dim_table 1, 3, 5
i think im seeing this in the sequential output also.
That's true.
So do you think no one will use this particular format? If so, I will wait 
for new version..
I don't know. Somebody from OU contacted with me about using WRF-PHDF5. But 
I didn't hear from them about this issue.
BTW, in the parallel output (but not the sequential), you put each time 
step in its own group. was this to optimize parallel performance or something ?
The reason is: we are using contiguous storage for parallel HDF5 because of 
performance issue. So that's why we put each time step in to its own group. 
I hope that in the future I can have time or maybe a little funding to 
modify the WRF-HDF5 IO modules with 1.8 release.
thanks for the help!
You are welcome. Thanks for pointing out this to me.
Kent