How to open SWERA TMY file from within SAM

NREL has Pakistan's TMY data at this location www.nrel.gov/international/downloads/pakistan_tmy.zip
it mentions that it's SWERA TMY file But SAM doesn't recognize them even after adding the .tm2 extension. Any Idea?

The files available from the web link you mention contain "typical year" data but are not in the TMY2 file format. Before you can use a weather data with SAM, it must be converted to a file in one of the following formats: TMY3 (.csv), TMY2 (.tm2), or EPW (.epw).

To use the Pakistan weather files from the website (or files for any of the other countries listed ), after downloading the .zip file, you can use the TMYreader.xls spreadsheet included with the files to open the typical year data set (files ending in "TY"). Then, in SAM, on the Climate page, open the TMY3 Creator, select a dummy TMY3 file, and then cut and paste the appropriate columns of data from the spreadsheet into the data table in SAM.

For detailed instructions on using the TMY3 Creator, please see SAM's help system. You can also search this forum for other posts on the topic.

Best regards,
Paul.