SMOKE supports two major approaches for formatting its output files that are used as inputs to air quality models (i.e., model-ready files): the CMAQ/Models-3 approach and the UAM-based approach. The CMAQ/Models-3 approach is used for the CMAQ model, and the UAM-based approach is used for the UAM models, and CAM_X.

The CMAQ/Models-3 approach uses one required 3-D I/O API file that contains the gridded, hourly, speciated, and vertically distributed emissions. In SMOKE, it is called the EGTS3D_L file. To create the 3-D model-ready emissions file, SMOKE computes plume rise for some or all point sources. For CMAQ, two additional optional files can be provided for plume-in-grid (PinG) processing. The first must contain locations and stack parameters for PinG sources and is called the STACK_GROUPS file. The second must contain the hourly, speciated emissions for the same PinG sources in a file called the PINGTS_L file.

The UAM-based approach has two required files: (1) a 2-D emissions Fortran binary file with all sources other than point sources and all low-level point sources, and (2) an elevated-point-source Fortran binary file. The SMOKE program Smk2emis can create the 2-D emissions Fortran binary file (called the UAM_EGTS file) by converting a 2-D EGTS_L file from an I/O API format. To obtain the elevated-point-source Fortran binary file, the SMOKE program Smkmerge can create an ASCII elevated-point-source file, which can then be converted to the required binary format using the UAM preprocessor Ptsrce.