"Copying" Data to other format DPlot Plots

[raswaim]

I'm trying to find the easiest way to create new plots with different formats (3D vs 2D, etc) or different X axis variables from a data set that has already been read into an existing plot.... For example, I have created a plugin that reads in a synchronous sampling of 20 or so parameters from a custom format and creates a time based XY plot. Occassionally I would like to select three of the parameters and look at their relationship in a 3D format (using the synchronous samples as triplets), or create an XY chart showing the dependency between two of the parameters. I'd rather not write another plugin (and I never implemented curve selection in the one I wrote), and going through something like Excel to select the curves and create another plot isn't really practical since there are several hundred thousand points in a typical plot.

Simple suggestions? Is there an obvious (or practical) way to do this short of writing another "import" or "generate" plugin that I've missed? I know there are copy and insert link functions, but I don't see any direct way to use them in this fashion.... Thanks!

[DPlotAdmin]

Richard,
There's nothing available immediately, but your question reminds me of a change I've been meaning to make for a while that will help when done: Copy Data on an XY plot will currently only copy a single curve. I need to either make that a multiple-selection list in the case of all curves sharing the same X, or just automatically make the assumption that you want to copy all curves for that case.

If there are more than 2 curves, though, I'd still need to change the Paste function to allow you to pick which columns to use for your 3D plot. And this is a goofy way to accomplish what you want to do anyway. I'll add another menu command to create a new 3D surface plot from 2 selected curves (which must necessarily share the same X values or nothing would make sense.)

You can already use the amplitudes of one curve for the ordinate of all other curves, though. See "Switch independent variable" on the Generate menu.

[raswaim]

Interesting - I thought I'd tried the switch independent variable before and didn't get quite what I wanted, but I just tried it again and it will do fine for the 2D items, I just need to delete extraneous curves after using it.

For the 3D, 4D (and even for 2D's) I was thinking that something like a "New from..." that would allow you to create any of the new plot formats by selecting curves from an open document would be useful. Or even if you had the same functionality for selecting curves from a .grf file that you already provide in open functions for .csv format (I could dump inefficient ASCII archives entirely and keep my data in grf formats!). The basis for these requests are an artifact of the nature of the data we look at - there is a ton of it, and most of it is boring. I generally put a large timeslice into a big 2D plot to find areas of interest, then I zoom in and view the data in that area and explore relationships (now that I think of it, a "New from..." that had a checkbox for "only data in current window extents" would be great too). So in your copious free time maybe you could give this concept some thought....

Thanks!

[DPlotAdmin]

Richard,
I started to plug in a "2 curves -> 3D surface plot" gizmo, but caught myself thinking about what the result would look like before I got very far. Unless one of the curves oscillates like a sine wave, this won't give much of a surface, and no surface at all if the "curve" is linear. The short version is I'm not sure how useful this will be. How about a 3D scatter plot?

[DPlotAdmin]

PS: If a scatter plot is what you're after, you might want to take a look at Options>Bubble Plot. You may not be aware of this as it is a fairly recent addition.

[raswaim]

David - Yes, I was thinking about a scatter plot, and in fact a 4D bubble plot was one of the formats I'd like to get to (good addition). That's why I was looking for a generic "New from..." kind of function so I could create any kind of plot from existing data. Some of the data sets I'm looking at contain pointing vectors in 3D space, so these plots would end up looking like (sparse) unit spheres indicating directional sensitivity. Others are just multi-variable problems where there are some complex (and poorly understood) dependencies....

BTW - On 2D (or 2D+1?) Bubble plots, is there a way to create a color key legend when I allow the bubble to change color as well as size?

Thanks!

[DPlotAdmin]

Sleepless too, eh?

BTW - On 2D (or 2D+1?) Bubble plots, is there a way to create a color key legend when I allow the bubble to change color as well as size?

No, not yet. That was in the back of my head but I wanted to first add a third intermediate color (maybe). I'm not satisfied with being able to distinguish colors when only two are used. Maybe I just need new glasses. In any case, thanks for the reminder.