A.4.5 3D Plot

3D scatter plot window

3D scatter plot window

The 3D plot window draws 3-dimensional scatter plots of one or more triples of table columns (or derived quantities) on Cartesian axes. You can display it using the 3D () button in the Control Window's toolbar.

On the display a marker is plotted for each row in the selected dataset(s) at a position determined by the values in the table columns selected to provide the X, Y and Z values. A marker will only be plotted if none of the X, Y and Z values are blank. Select the quantities to plot and the plotting symbols with the dataset selector at the bottom.

The 3D space can be rotated by dragging the mouse around on the surface - it will rotate around the point in the centre of the plotted cube. The axis labels try to display themselves the right way up and in a way which is readable from the viewing point if possible, which means they move around while the rotation is happening. By default the points are rendered as though the 3D space is filled with a 'fog', so that more distant points appear more washed out - this provides a visual cue which can help to distinguish the depth of plotted points. However, you can turn this off if you want. You can't zoom in and out of the plot using the mouse, but you can use the Axis Configuration Dialogue to set axis ranges (and labels) manually. If there are many points, then you may find that they're not all plotted while a drag-to-rotate gesture is in progress. This is done to cut down on rendering time so that GUI response stays fast. When the drag is finished (i.e. when you release the mouse button) all the points will come back again.

Clicking on any of the plotted points will activate it - see Section 7.

The following buttons are available on the toolbar:

Export as EPS
Pops up a dialogue which will write the current plot as an EPS file. In general this is a faithful and high quality rendering of what is displayed in the plot window. However, if plotting is being done using the transparent markers, it won't come out right since transparency cannot be represented in PostScript; the markers will be rendered as if they were opaque. Currently, if there are many points being plotted, this can result in a rather large output file.
Export as GIF
Pops up a dialogue which will output the current plot to a GIF file. The output file is just the same as the plotted image that you see. Resize the plotting window before the export to control the size of the output GIF.
Rescale
Rescales the axes of the current plot so that it contains all the data points in the currently selected subsets. By default the plot will be scaled like this, but it it may have changed because of changes in the subset selection.
Reorient
Reorients the axes of the current plot to their default position. This can be useful if you've lost track of where you've rotated the plot to with the mouse. This also resets the zoom level to normal if you've changed it.
Grid
Toggles whether the axis lines are drawn or not.
Fog
Toggles whether rendering is done as if the space is filled with fog. If this option is selected, distant points will appear more washed out than near ones.
Replot
Redraws the current plot. It is usually not necessary to use this button, since if you change any of the plot characteristics with the controls in this window the plot will be redrawn automatically. However if you have changed the data, e.g. by editing cells in the Data Window, the plot is not automatically redrawn (since this is potentially an expensive operation and you may not require it). Clicking this button redraws the plot taking account of any changes to the table data.
Draw Subset Region
Allows you to draw a region on the screen defining a new Row Subset. When you have finished drawing it, click this button again to indicate you're done. The subset will include points at all depths in the viewing direction which fall in the region you have drawn. See Appendix A.4.1.3 for more details.

The following additional item is available as a menu item only:

Antialias
Toggles whether the axes and their annotations are drawn antialiased. Antialiased lines are smoother and generally look more pleasing, especially for text at a sharp angle, but it can slow the rendering down a bit.

You have considerable freedom to configure how the points are plotted including symbol shapes, colours and transparency; this is described in the following subsection.