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Displays a dialog box that allows you to specify the appearance of contour plots for 3D data. To edit the Z values of plots on a rectangular grid, or any of the X,Y,Z components on a plot of random points, use the Edit Data command on the Edit menu or click the Edit Data button on the toolbar:
Edit Data button: 
Type
Shaded bands- represents ranges of Z with different color bands.
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Contour lines - draws contour lines at user-specified intervals.
This option is disabled if “View in 3D” is checked. |
Waterfall plot - draws lines along the surface at constant values of X.
This option is only valid for gridded data (as opposed to randomly-spaced 3D points), and is disabled if "View in 3D" is unchecked. NOTE: To reorganize your randomly-spaced 3D points into a rectangular grid, use the Generate Mesh command. |
| Wireframe - draws grid lines and/or element edges ("Borders") along the surface. No hidden line/surface removal. |
This option is disabled if "View in 3D" is unchecked. Lighting, contour interval, and "Draw sides" settings are ignored. If both the "Grid" and "Borders" options under "Draw" are unchecked, grid lines will be drawn. Line width is controlled by the "Wireframe lines" setting under "Other Lines". |
View in 3D
If checked, the plot is drawn with a 3D projection using the view angles specified by “Azimuth” and “Elevation”. If unchecked, the plot is drawn as a plan view of the XY plane.
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Azimuth - view angle around the z axis. 0 degrees is looking in the positive X direction; 90 degrees is looking in the positive Y direction.
Elevation - view angle from the horizontal. 0 degrees gives an elevation view; 90 degrees is looking straight down at the surface. For a top-down view with X axis at the bottom of the plot and the Y axis labels along the left side of the plot, use elevation and azimuth both equal to 90 degrees.
Angles control - the graphic below the Elevation text box allows you to select viewing angles with your mouse. Click within the circle to change the viewing angles. The center of the circle represents an elevation angle of 90 degrees (looking straight down at the surface), the inner circle is 45 degrees, and the outer circle is 0 degrees (viewing along the XY plane). The 3D unit axes will rotate as you move the mouse across this control. View angles will not be changed until you click within the circle.
You cannot select a negative elevation angle (looking up at the surface from underneath) using this control. To use a negative elevation angle enter the value in the Elevation text box or click on the corresponding spin button.
Draw sides - If checked, planes will be drawn from the edges of the plot to the XY plane, obscuring the underside of the surface. You should not use an elevation angle less than 0 if Draw sides is checked. The edges of each plane will be drawn in the border color. Planes will be filled with the color specified by the control adjacent to the Draw sides checkbox.
Lighting - choose from None, Gouraud, or Phong shading. Gouraud shading generally results in the surface having a faceted appearance. Phong shaded surfaces look much smoother, but require additional processor time and significantly more memory, particularly for very large data sets. Both models, as implemented in DPlot, assume a single light source in the direction of the viewpoint, infinitely far away. The effect of this assumption is that the light source vector is constant across the surface, and the light intensity is the same at all locations. No specular reflections are performed.
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Ambient light fraction - values are limited to the range 0-1, inclusive. With 0 ambient light, planes that are near edge-on to the light source vector (the viewpoint) will be very dark. At the other extreme, a setting of 1 is equivalent to full brightness; the light source has no effect on appearance.
Lines/Levels
Intervals - Number of contour intervals to display. Limited to 255 bands or lines.
Lower/Upper Limit - Lowest and highest contour values. Keep in mind that the interval between legend values will be different for shaded bands than for contour lines. For shaded bands the interval is (upper limit-lower limit)/(number of intervals). For contour lines the interval is (upper limit-lower limit)/(number of intervals-1).
Use actual displayed limits - Check this box if you would like for DPlot to automatically adjust the lower and upper contour limits when you zoom in/out and/or force the plot extents by using the Extents/Intervals /Size command on the Options menu. If checked, the Intervals entry will be used as a guideline; the actual number used may be slightly more or less. If you zoom in to such an extent that only one data point is visible, or if all visible data points have the same magnitude, the lower and upper limits will be forced to that value +/- 5%, or +/- 0.5 in the case of Z=0.
Leave this box unchecked to specify the lower and upper limits, which will then remain in effect on zoomed plots.
Custom Levels - If checked, then the Intervals, Lower limit and Upper limit settings are ignored and you may enter up to 255 unevenly-spaced contour values by clicking the adjacent >> button. This feature might be handy when a surface plot includes important details in specific Z ranges and those ranges are several orders of magnitude smaller than the Z extents.
Results - Shows the top five contour intervals that will be displayed, so you don't need to perform the division mentioned above in your head.
Contour lines
Line width - Controls the width of the pen used to draw contour lines. NOTE: Colors and/or gray shades may not be printed correctly with very small line widths if your printer must simulate colors with dithered patterns. For example, an HP LaserJet uses patterns of black and white dots to simulate various colors and gray shades. Similarly, many color printers simulate a wide range of colors by using patterns of cyan, magenta, and yellow dots. If the pattern used by the printer to produce these simulations is wider than the specified line width, the output will not be as you expected. In particular, a 0.0” line width (1 printer dot) may result in a single white (invisible) line. For best results when printing colors or gray shades, the minimum line widths for all curves and grid lines should be set to no less than 12 dots, or 0.02 inches on a 600 dpi printer or 0.04 inches on a 300 dpi printer.
Label every... - If checked, DPlot will draw the contour values on a 2D contour line plot, regardless of whether Display Legend is checked. Control the frequency of the labels with the adjacent text box.
Transparent - If checked, the background of labels is not drawn. Otherwise a white background is used, usually obscuring the underlying contour line.
Black text - If checked, labels are drawn in black. Otherwise labels are drawn using the same color used for the corresponding contour line.
Scale Factors
Specifies how the X, Y, and Z extents are stretched or compressed. This has no effect on the actual data values, only on appearance. You can have DPlot automatically initialize these scale factors to give square extents using the General command on the Options menu. Use a negative scale factor to invert the normal drawing direction.
Draw
Axes - If checked, the coordinate planes are drawn as a series of grid lines on 3D plots, and a box with X and Y scales is drawn around 2D plots. X and Y axis labels will not be drawn unless “Draw axes” is checked.
Grid - Draws grid lines across the plot at the same interval as the X and Y axis labels. The frequency of these tick marks can be changed with the Extents/Intervals /Size command on the Options menu.
Borders - Draws lines through the contour control points. For random 3D points this will draw the borders of the triangles. For points on a rectangular grid this results in lines around each grid cell.
Data points - Draws a small box at each data point. Ignored for waterfall plots.
Legend - Displays a legend using either color bars for “shaded bands” or colored text for “contour lines”.
Label every __ interval - Controls the frequency of contour labels in the legend. If set to 1, every contour line will have a corresponding label in the legend. If set to 2, every other contour line will have a corresponding label, etc.
Colors
Choose between a smooth gradation of colors ranging from magenta to red, black to very light gray, or a custom blend of up to 64 colors that you specify.
NOTE: On 2D contour plots, if you use a custom color palette with more than one color and set the color for the low and high levels to the same color, then DPlot considers the contour values to cycle; in other words it considers the low end of the scale to be equivalent to the high end of the scale. In this case, triangles that have all three vertices at either the high or low end of the scale will use the same solid color across the entire face of the triangle. In the case of contour lines, no lines will be drawn on this triangle.
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Related macro commands |
Page url: http://www.dplot.com/help/index.htm?helpid_contourplot.htm
