Plot-3D is an advanced 3-D plotter using OpenGL for displaying objects in three dimensions. With Plot-3D, you can display surfaces, parametric curves, and cloud of points. You can superpose 3-D objects, edit data, apply operations on the displayed objects, manipulate the objects, and save in image files.
Plot-3D main window
Plot-3D Main Features
Plot-3D can plot surfaces, cloud of points, parametric 3-D curves, and multiple 2-D curves
You can display surfaces as:
• | Filled polygons (surface) |
• | Empty polygons (meshes) |
• | Vertices (nodes). |
Drawing surfaces. Top-left: filled polygons, top-right: meshes, bottom: nodes
When surfaces are drawn as filled polygons, the following shading properties can be chosen:
• | Faceted: filled polygons + lines. |
• | Flat: filled polygons without lines. |
• | Interpolated: interpolated filled polygons (smooth surface). |
Shading types. Top-left: faceted, top-right: interpolation, bottom: flat
Up to twelve (12) predefined color maps are available:
Predefined color maps
Several file formats are available:
• | Simple files (*.txt, *.dat, *.xyz): general non-formatted ASCII files. |
• | Surface files (.surf): for surface data. |
• | Cloud files (.cloud): to save cloud of points. |
• | Curve files (.crv): to save parametric 3-D curves. |
• | Multiple-curves (.dcrv): to save a set of 2-D curves. |
See File > Open, File > Open As, and 3-D File Formats for more details on files.
You can display as many 3-D objects as desired in the same area.
Several types of axes are available.
Available axes
Zoom, scale, translate, rotate, and pick nodes.
Supported image formats are: BMP, JPEG, PNG, XPM, XBM, PBM, PGM, PPM, PPMRAW, PGMRAW, PBMRAW.
You can write functions to define both surfaces and 3-D parametric curves (see the Action pull-down menu).
You can re-mesh surfaces by using linear and cubic spline interpolations (see the Action pull-down menu).
Main Plot-3D Objects
When data are displayed, the main drawing area contains:
• | Axes, which are represented by perpendicular lines or boxes |
• | A grid |
• | A ruler (main and secondary ticks and values) |
• | x, y, and z-axis labels |
• | A general title |
• | The 3-D object (surface, curve, ...) to be displayed. |
Plot-3D can draw the following types of objects:
• | Surfaces (closed or not) as filled polygons, meshes or nodes. |
• | Cloud of points: (x,y,z) data. |
• | Parametric 3-D curves: x=f(t), y=f(t), z=f(t). |
• | Multiple 2-D curves: allows you to display a set of 2-D curves z=fi(y) along the x-axis or z=fi(x) along the y-axis. This view is useful for comparing curves between them. For example, to check the differences between the observations of an experiment as a function of time for different parameters. |
Drawing Functionalities
Current object
As you can plot (superpose) multiple objects, Plot-3D needs to know on which object operations (properties modifications, node picking) will apply. To indicate the object, an active object is defined as with the current curve. In Plot-3D, the last object displayed automatically becomes the current curve.
Because the operations allowed on object types are not the same, Plot-3D restricts the types of objects that can be mixed. The types of objects you can mix are:
• | Objects of the same type: surfaces together, curves together. |
• | Surfaces and cloud of points. |
• | 3-D curves and 2-D curves sets. |