A.4.3 2D Plot

Plot Window

Plot Window

The plot window allows you to do 2-dimensional scatter plots of one or more pair of table columns (or derived quantities). You can display it using the Plot () button in the Control Window's toolbar.

On the plotting surface 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 and Y values. A marker will only be plotted if both the X and Y values are not blank. Select the quantities to plot and the plotting symbols with the dataset selector at the bottom. You can configure the axes, including zooming in and out, with the mouse or manually as described in Appendix A.4.1.2.

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 or from zooming in or out.
Configure Axes
Pops up a dialogue to allow manual configuration of axis ranges and labels - see Appendix A.4.1.2.
Grid
Toggles whether a grid is drawn over the plotting surface or not.
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. See Appendix A.4.1.3 for more details.
Subset From Visible
Defines a new Row Subset consisting of only the points which are currently visible on the plotting surface. See Appendix A.4.1.3 for more explanation.

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