The 3D Scientific Graph Control is capable of producing a wide variety
of charts. These include Surfaces (WireFrame, Solid, Shaded Solid, Contoured
Solid, and Pixel), 3D Bar (WireFrame, Solid, and Shaded Solid), 3D Scatter
(Points, Lines, Points + Lines, and Area Layers producing a Waterfall
chart), and 3D Object (via a polygon data interface in WireFrame, Solid,
and Shaded Solid styles). The property PolyMode
is used to control which type of image you need to produce. All types
support rotation and viewing height adjustment. There is also an automatic
rotation feature which will animate the rotation of an image. There are
two shading algorithms, one shades to white and the other shades to the
objects color. 3D Surface charts can have a bottom or top 2D contour
included in the image. This contour can be in lines or colors. See ShowContour. Within the demo, see example
400 which shows how to create a simple 3D Wireframe.
3D Surface charts are produced from XData,
YData, and ZData.
Generally, X-Data and Z-Data are equally spaced but this is not mandatory.
Once you supply this data, the component will construct a list of polygons
which will produce a surface plot of the data. The process of creating
3D charts is further discussed in Chapter 4 as well as in the included
example code. Within
the demo, see example 402.
The 3D Bar chart is generally used to show categorized data along 2
axes. Where a 2D Bar chart places multiple subsets next to each other,
the 3D Bar places multiple subsets at different z locations. Similar to
the Graph component, the 3D Bar chart only needs YData.
XData and ZData
are not used in this mode. Subsets
defines how many rows are along z axis and Points
defines how many columns are along x axis. SubsetLabels
and PointLabels are used to
label rows and columns. SubsetColors
is used to control colors of subset bars. Within the demo, see example
The 3D scatter chart is much like a 2D scatter chart with the addition
of ZData. Each data point thus has its own XData, YData,
and ZData coordinates. Possible plotting methods are points, lines,
and points plus lines. Theres also an Area plotting method which will
produce area layers along the z axis. This can be used to construct a
Waterfall chart. Comparison Subsets are supported in this mode to allow
for combining of plotting methods. See PlottingMethod,
and PlottingMethodII, and
ComparisonSubsets. Within the demo, see example 404.
The 3D Polygon data interface (PEP_structPOLYDATA)
allows the developer to supply their own list of polygons to be rendered.
WireFrame, Solid, and Shaded Solid images can be produced from this data.
Its important that polygon vertices are ordered properly. The polygon
vertices must be ordered in a counter-clockwise order as viewed from outside
of the object. This is only necessary for hidden line removal and shading
purposes. If you are only producing a wireframe image, the ordering of
vertices is not critical. AddSkirts
should be set to TRUE if the polygon data forms an enclosed surface and
you want to produce a surface or shaded surface image.
More than one object can be placed into 3D space, however, the objects
should not intersect. Within
the demo, see example 406.
The 3D component can be rotated in several ways. Either by dragging the
thumb-tags on the horizontal and vertical scrollbars, or by invoking the
auto-rotation feature by double-clicking or using the popup menu. While
rotating, you may want to limit the image detail to just a wireframe to
speed rotation of complex images with many polygons. Producing rotated
text is also pretty slow, so there's another option to just plot the Plotting
Method without the axes, grid numbers, and axis labels. If the image is
simple, you can rotate in full detail.
See AutoRotation and RotationDetail.
The Plotting Method list will change based upon the PolyMode
setting. You can also control the possible entries with properties such
as AllowWireFrame and AllowSurface.
This same control of plotting methods is also available for the other
While the component is auto-rotating (AutoRotation),
you can control the degree direction and increment between each image.
When PlottingMethod is set
to Surface with Shading, this feature controls whether the brightest polygons
will be bright white or the brightest shade of color. See ShadingStyle.
When PolyMode is set to SURFACEPOLYGONS,
there is an option to place a 2D contour above or below the surface plot.
This contour can be in the form of lines or colors. If a color contour
is added, then a legend is also added unless explicitly disabled by the
developer with ShowContourLegends
set to False. See ShowContour.
Within the demo, see example 401.