DPlot

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Plot of text values

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Wed May 09, 2012 4:46 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 3

There's no good way to do this within DPlot, because you have to start with numbers. I can probably put together a file import plugin that does what you want.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Plot of text values

Author: apreden
Posted: Wed May 09, 2012 9:49 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 3

Thanks for your answer. Any possibility to see this function implemented? Basically what would be needed is that DPlot does automatically what you said, i.e. to substitute integer numbers to the text values (1 fo the first text value found, 2 for the second, and so on), then make a standard plot and place the text values as labels on the Y axis

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Polar Plots - Option to Handle Negative Radius Values

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 5:58 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 5

Thanks for your e-mail examples. I've added a "Transform negative radii to angle+PI, abs(radius)" option to the polar plot options. It operates a bit differently than the others in that it actually performs this operation on the data and is therefore not reversible (other than using Undo). In other words checking this option then later unchecking it has no effect. I tried just using this manipulation on the scaling and leaving the data alone, but that leads to a lot of confusion: mins/maxes, mean, standard deviation and other values would not be right - or at least not consistent.

This change will be in the next release.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Polar Plots - Option to Handle Negative Radius Values

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 4:03 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 5

Quote:

Since negative distance is not permitted in polar coordinates...

That's what you and I think because we have similar backgrounds. But for RF and EE guys and others there is nothing unusual about negative radii. But your suggestion to add an option to handle this is easy enough and I'll give it a go.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Polar Plots - Option to Handle Negative Radius Values

Author: raydela
Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 2:59 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 5

Thanks for your quick reply!

Your solution (Operate on X and Operate on Y) worked just fine.

Could this behavior be made into a 'check box' option on the 'Polar Options' dialog though?

Since negative distance is not permitted in polar coordinates, the convention is to interpret it as a positive distance 180 degrees away.

I will e-mail you a 'before' and 'after' plot to show that using this convention plotted my hyperbola (both 'pieces' that is) in an undistorted way.

Regarding theta vs X, r vs Y: I can see where this could be pretty messy since you would need to make many changes through out DPlot because there are many reference to X and Y in menus, etc.

As far as the theta character, I had to use the 'Insert Symbol' dialog (selected by a button with an 'alpha' character on it), but I see what you mean - the insertion did not place a 'theta' in my equation in the dialog's edit box but rather it placed a text string which is interpreted as a theta when displayed in the legend.

Ray D.

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Polar Plots - Option to Handle Negative Radius Values

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 2:29 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 5

This is done, now, for the legend. But I think I'll likely leave the dialog box alone, otherwise it is too confusing. You don't want the equation to be a function of X but the limits shown as theta. And there's no ASCII theta character you could use in the equation.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Polar Plots - Option to Handle Negative Radius Values

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 11:31 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 5

Ray,
I don't know that I'd want to automatically shift things like that, but you can manually do it unless I misunderstand. Use Edit>Operate on X with X=if(Y<0,X+pi,X) and then Operate on Y with Y=abs(Y).

Good point about the legend (the dialog, too). The only problem is you'll need to set the scaling to polar first, because once the legend is created the text there is just a bunch of characters as far as DPlot is concerned.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

Suggestions/Questions :: Polar Plots - Option to Handle Negative Radius Values

Author: raydela
Subject: Polar Plots - Option to Handle Negative Radius Values
Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 4:27 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 5

Hello,

I ran into a situation where I have a polar equation which can generate negative radius (Y) values for some ranges of angle (X).

Can you add an option on the Linear/Log Scaling | L. Polar Coordinates | Polar Options dialog to "Force Positive Radial Values" (or some such name) which will convert an (X,-Y) (i.e. theta, -R) point into (X+Pi,+Y) point (assuming angle in radians)?

Plot the following example: Y = 1/(1+1.2*Cos(X)) for x = 0 to 2*pi (every 0.01 radians). This is a polar equation for a hyperbola.
The auto scaling initially creates a polar chart having large positive & negative R values. If you then manually rescale for r= -10 to r = +10, for example, you can see the 'two pieces' of the hyperbola, although distorted. The 2nd piece of the hyperbola is 'mapped' in the negative radius area, but I want to have this 'mapped' in the positive radius area, but with each theta flipped 180 degrees (only if original r is negative).

Also, when polar coordinates are selected, how difficult would it be for you to make the Y = F(X) dialog refer to r = (instead of Y=) and "from theta =," "to theta =", and "with interval dtheta" (except show the actual symbol for theta in dialog AND CURVE LEGEND)? In polar charts I always need to change the default "x" symbol to a "theta" symbol for the legend text.

Ray D.

Suggestions/Questions :: RE: Plot of text values

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 8:00 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 3

Not possible, sorry. At least not directly. You could substitute numbers for your colors and then manually place labels for the colors, but I understand that's more trouble than you want.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

Suggestions/Questions :: Plot of text values

Author: apreden
Subject: Plot of text values
Posted: Wed May 02, 2012 3:42 am (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 3

It is possible to plot a curve that is composed not by numerical values, but by text values? Example, I have a CSV file like this:

Date Color
----------------------------------
01/05/2012 00:01:00 GREEN
01/05/2012 00:02:00 GREEN
01/05/2012 00:03:00 GREEN
01/05/2012 00:04:00 YELLOW
01/05/2012 00:05:00 RED
01/05/2012 00:06:00 RED

and I want to obtain this plot:

Code:

__ RED
_| YELLOW
___| GREEN

Is this possible? If not, this will be a very useful extension, other plotting software have this option.

General discussion :: RE: NANs in your text files?

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2012 11:29 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 2

Thanks, Jon. I'm glad you spoke up because QNAN would have broken what I had in mind. I think I'll probably have to handle this on a case-by-case basis.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

General discussion :: RE: NANs in your text files?

Author: jsc
Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2012 2:40 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 2

Campbell Scientific export files contain #QNAN when data is out of range.

I'll send some small pieces of some old files that I have.

Jon

(I also found a scanned copy of the data file format from 2007, and I'm thinking that you may already have a copy?)

General discussion :: NANs in your text files?

Author: DPlotAdmin
Subject: NANs in your text files?
Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:13 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 2

DPlot has for a while interpreted the character string "NAN" (or "nan" or "NaN") as "not a number": divide by 0, log(0), or other math error. And it treats those labels as numbers, though it just skips over them. It doesn't restrict the search to the first position because some programs output, for example, "!NAN!" or some variation.

This all works well unless you have a column of labels containing the sequence "NAN" (or any of the variations mentioned above) in one or more rows. In that case if you have, say, 3 columns with the last column containing labels, and in that third column is a "NAN" in any row, DPlot sees the sequence in your file:
number,number,label
number,number,number (line containing NAN)
number,number,label
... and this causes it to start over and assume the data starts in the row following the NAN, since the data types don't match up. One user sent me a file today with the label "KONAN" and later let me know the label might be "NANCY", which fouled up my first solution. Both of these fail in version 2.3.2.3 and earlier, for reasons mentioned above.

What I want to do is lock down what character sequences other programs might output as NaN's and ignore the rest.

So if you have a program that is outputting NaN's, what exactly is the format? What I'm leaning towards is checking for "NAN", "nan" or "NaN" at any position. If it starts in the first position OR if the previous character is non-alpha, AND the character following that sequence is non-alpha or the end-of-line, that's a NaN. But before doing this I want to make sure I'm not overlooking something.

Thanks for your time.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com

General discussion :: RE: Windows 7

Author: AWaterman
Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 8:14 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 4

I have just implemented similar kludgy fix in Access, as I am running it in two different environments with dplotlib in different places. However, good news is that our move to win 7 isn't a move to 64 bit office. We are moving to 32 bit Office 2010 (I just found out) so I think we should be OK.

Thanks

General discussion :: RE: Windows 7

Author: DPlotAdmin
Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 7:24 pm (GMT -5)
Topic Replies: 4

I'm working on the 64-bit version now. I'm sure it should be much easier than I'm encountering, but it is just a matter of time.

That DLL will be available soon, but there actually is a good reason to move all of the DDE calls into your VBA code and get rid of dependence on the DLL other than 32- vs. 64-bit issues. The old Excel VBA changed the working directory to that of the Add-In so that Excel could find the DLL, which seems a bit kludgy to me. If the DLL isn't needed then this goes away.
_________________
David Hyde
support@dplot.com