DPlot

I have data that are in rows by months and columns by years. Rather than plotting them as a contour surface or a mesh, I'd like to plot it where each data occupied its own square, like the surface of a checker board. The following plot was generated as a Z scatter, with the azimuth and angle turned to 90 degrees and the symbol size selected to try and fill in all white space between symbols.

Is there an easier & cleaner way that I am missing?

Thanks,
Richard

Any ideas or suggestions?

The regular grid of square cells with values defined by their "z value" is essentially a raster format plot.

Rich,
I was certain I had replied to this, but must have fumbled it somehow. On my to-do list is 3D bar charts, which will end up doing what you want. In the meantime, if you set the elevation and azimuth both to 90 you'll get rid of the offsets between symbols. You'll want to set the X and Y extents to the actual extents +/- 1/2 tick mark interval so that the symbols don't overlap the edges of the plot. Other than that, the only trick is in setting the symbol size - that will require some trial and error.

Thanks, David. I'll be looking for 3D bar charts in the revision notes.

As always, keep up the excellent work!

I have the latest DPlot update installed. I plot my rectangularly gridded values as an XYZSurface, then run the macro commands:
Contour3D(1)
ContourMethod(4)
ContourBarWidth(0.5,0.5)

The 3D view works for the first line of the macro, however, nothing changes when ContourMethod(4) is executed.

Is there something else I need to do?

This is what I get from the above macro...

Your data is random 3D points rather than points on a rectangular grid. You can use Options>Generate Mesh to produce points on a rectangular grid.

I rearranged the data so that I could make a ZGrid plot from Excel rather than using the XYZSurface plot. The macro command works as expected on the ZGrid.

Thanks for the tip!


Any suggestion for controlling the thickness of the bars?

Nevermind my last question about the bar thickness. That was easy to control with the macro.

Glad this all worked out. I probably need to add an error message for the macro and (if I can find room) an explanatory note on the Contour Options dialog box.

Is there any way to remove the black border that is automatically drawn around each 3-D bar? With a large number of data, the black borders take up a large percentage of the pixels in the graphic.

No, sorry, there isn't. But that's a good suggestion. To make things easier on everybody (especially me ) I'll probably just add a check for whether "Grid" or "Borders" are checked, draw black lines if either are, no black lines if they are not.

A yes/no choice for the presence of borders would seem to be the most logical. There's probably no need to have a color selection option..

Wasn't any more trouble since the control is already there. In today's release if you check "Borders" under "Draw" you'll get edges drawn in the border color. If unchecked, no edges. You can get version 2.2.4.6 with Check for Updates on the Help menu. If you're on the mailing list... the mail is on its way.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Once again, a sincere "thank you" for that modification. I have a feeling this checkerboard style plot is going to get alot of mileage from me and my colleagues.