DPlot

David,

Not having any success running the barchart macro:
Contour3D(1) ' Turn 3D view on
ContourMethod(4) ' Bar chart
ContourBarWidth(0.5,0.5) ' Sets bar widths relative to X and Y interval

I start Dplot, then run the macro, then paste or paste special, Ive tried both, the following Z values of an x-y matrix. The results are nonsense, so I am doing something wrong. Can you straighten me out?

Thanks,
Michael Cowing

3 1 3 2 0
5 3 4 3 1
4 2 2 1
4 2 2 2 0
1 1 1 1 0
2 2 2 1
2 2 2 1 1
2 2 2 1 1
2 2 1 1 0
2 2 2 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 1 -1 1
0 0 0 0 0
1 1 0 0
0 0 0 -1 0
0 0 0 0
0 0 -1 0
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 -1 0
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0

David,

The idea of my using the bar chart in place of the 3D space of x,y,z point of z height on an x,y grid is to tie the points to the x,y grid to help visually locate them in the 3D space.

I just thought of another idea that would accomplish the same thing in a cleaner, and I imagine easier to program, way.

Since the floating points look like baloons of color corresponding to their heights, how about attaching a string from each baloon to the grid at the x,y base plane. That would make it visually easier to locate in 3D space. If the line can be colored the same as the baloon, even better.

This might be better looking than bars.

Michael

I'm not sure what I'm looking at with your data. Are those all Z values, or what? (And if they are, what are X and Y?)

In any case I did a poor job of explaining the limitations. Like waterfall plots, 3D bar charts can only be used with Z values on a rectangular grid. And there are only a few ways to get data in that format into DPlot:

1) Generate>Z=f(X,Y)
2) ZGrid Excel Add-In command or, similarly, another program that calls a DPLOTLIB.DLL function.
3) The ZTable file import plugin.
4) Starting with random 3D points, producing a rectangular grid with Options>Generate Grid.

If you have 3 columns of X,Y,Z values in a text file or you copy/paste 3 columns from the clipboard, it doesn't matter whether the points are truly "random" or not - DPlot will treat them that way. Bar charts aren't supported for that format because I'd want a) all bars to be the same size and b) no bars to overlap. The check against overlapping bars would be a huge time hit when working with 100's of thousands of points, as many folks do.

Since the floating points look like baloons of color corresponding to their heights, how about attaching a string from each baloon to the grid at the x,y base plane. That would make it visually easier to locate in 3D space. If the line can be colored the same as the baloon, even better.

That's a good option to add to 3D scatter plots. Thanks for the suggestion.

Droplines for 3D scatter plots are done. Update mail is being sent as I write this. If you're not on the list you can get the update with Help>Check for Updates.

Thanks for your input.