3D polar plots

[Vestas Australian Wind Te]

Hey All,

I'm curious as to whether DPlot can do 3D polar plots? That is, the standard polar plot with radius and angle but also with a linear z axis coming out of the screen.

Thanks for your time

[DPlotAdmin]

No, sorry - DPlot won't do that. You can almost get there by starting out with X,Y,Z points and using Operate on X and Operate on Y to transform to angle/radius pairs, the trouble is Operate on X and Operate on Y are separate functions, and after doing either, the input to the other will be fouled up. Another problem is that with cylindrical coordinates it shouldn't be a problem to graph a surface that has more than one point at the same X,Y, but that isn't possible with a normal surface plot in DPlot.

So what is needed is what you asked for to start with - a new plot type using cylindrical coordinates. This has been on my to-do list for a while, but I can't promise when it will be available. One gotcha is there almost has to be some sort of restriction on how the data is organized, something like "you must have N values all at the same Z". Otherwise there wouldn't be enough information in the data to decide where the surface is.