RwDAT File Format

The RockWorks datasheets (.RwDAT files) are stored in an UTF-8 text format. This is a new file type as of RockWorks16, replacing the .ATD format used since RockWorks2002. (RockWorks can open .ATD files and update them to the new format.) RwDAT files are Unicode-compliant so that non-Latin-based alphabets can be supported.

RwDAT files contain two main blocks:

A header block at the top of the file that lists a variety of information - the column titles, column units, column types, notes, and coordinate information.
The body of the data, listed in rows and columns of entries, with columns separate by <Tab> characters. RockWorks can load datasheets containing up to 199 columns and up to 1,048,000 rows.

If you feel compelled to look under the hood at the RwDAT file structure, you can open one of the sample RwDAT files (installed into your "My Documents\RockWorks Data\Samples" folder) in a text editor or word processor. That will show you how the header is laid out, with its XML "tags", and how the data block is laid out in tab-separated columns.

! Be warned that if you edit the file outside of RockWorks, and if you don't follow the required syntax of the different blocks, you will get unpredictable results the next time you try to load and use the file in RockWorks.

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