Plot-3D Tool

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

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).

3d_surface

Drawing surfaces. Top-left: filled polygons, top-right: meshes, bottom: nodes

Shading

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).

3d_shading

Shading types. Top-left: faceted, top-right: interpolation, bottom: flat

Colors

Up to twelve (12) predefined color maps are available:

3d_12colors

Predefined color maps

File formats

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.

3-D objects superposition

You can display as many 3-D objects as desired in the same area.

Axes

Several types of axes are available.

plot3davailaxes

Available axes

Common 3-D operations

Zoom, scale, translate, rotate, and pick nodes.

Saving in image files

Supported image formats are: BMP, JPEG, PNG, XPM, XBM, PBM, PGM, PPM, PPMRAW, PGMRAW, PBMRAW.

User-defined surfaces and curves

You can write functions to define both surfaces and 3-D parametric curves (see the Action pull-down menu).

Interpolation

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.

Mixing objects together

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.