3D Graphics: Basic Operations and Zooming
Rotation
If you want to get a good look at the 3D graphic from all sides, use the arrow keys on your keyboard to rotate the 3D graphic in all directions. This is only possible if you are not in cursor mode (see below).
Switching between Waterfall/Mesh view
You can switch from waterfall (lines only) to mesh (solid rectangles) view by selecting the “3D Tools/Mesh” option from the menu or by pressing the button in the toolbar. You can also use the F2 key as a shortcut to switch between views.
Cursor
By pressing the TAB key or the button on the toolbar, you can switch to cursor mode. A cursor will appear on the graphic and you will be able to move it with the keyboard arrow keys. The cursor’s X, Y position and f(X,Y) for the current cursor position will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
To move the cursor 10x faster through the graphic, press the SHIFT key together with the arrow keys.
Zooming in/out
Zooming-in part of the graphic:
In spectrogram view, simply select the part of the graphic with the mouse (rounding box), and then select “Edit/Zoom in” on the menu or toolbar option. If the cursor is turned on, the zoom-in option will always zoom in to an area around the current cursor position.
For a 3D-graphic in a spectrogram view, a fast zoom-in or zoom-out by using a mouse wheel can be performed.
The “Edit/Zoom out” option and the button on the toolbar will restore the zoom positions to before the last zoom in operation.
After zooming in into a smaller part of the graphic, you can move that part through the whole graphic by using the Shift-Key + Arrow-Keys for the moving direction.
Measuring rectangles in a spectrogram
To measure the difference between certain points in a spectrogram in time or frequency direction, you can use mouse rectangle selection (just as for zooming in) and pressing the Ctrl key at the same time. In that case, no zoom-in will be performed, and next to your mouse selection, a detailed measure of the selected rectangle will be shown.
Zoom-in graphical content of the window
By pressing the and
buttons in the toolbar, you zoom in/out only graphical content of a window. This zooming will affect the displaying only; the data displayed will remain the same.
Palettes & Colors
In a 3D graphic mesh mode, the color of the rectangles is defined by a current palette. You can define it for each window separately from its context menu or from the main menu. The available palettes are:
• Hot (red/black)
• Blue (blue/black)
• Gray (white/black)
• Copper (yellow/black)
• HSV (all colors)
• White (inverted gray palette)
• Jet
• Rainbow
• Winter
• Autumn
• Spring
• Summer
• Cool
Inverting colors: If the 3D graphic is in Mesh mode, you can invert its colors by selecting the “Invert colors” menu option from the context or main menu. For most palettes, it will provide the graphic with lighter colors for the lower values, making the graphic much more printer-friendly.
Adjusting Z-axis
When a 3D graphic is recalculated and redrawn because its parent signal has changed, to avoid speed losses, min & max values are not automatically recalculated. This can cause the 3D graphic to go out from the visible part of the coordinate system, or can corrupt the color layout. If that occurs, you can select the “3D Tools/Adjust Z-axis” option from the menu and min & max values for Z axis will recalculate. This will solve all described problems.
Exporting 3D graphic values in file
By using the options “File/ASCII/CSV files/Export 3D-graphics”, you can export all values from the visible part of the 3D graphic in a one file. There are 3 options: export in a file with X,Y,Z triples in 3 columns (tab delimited), as a matrix where the first row contains X values, the first column Y values and the rest of the file are Z values in a tab delimited table, and finally, inverted variant of the second matrix format (with switched rows and columns). All of these file types can be loaded by, for example, MS Excel for further analysis.
Copying 3D graphic values to the clipboard
By using the menu option “Edit/Copy data to clipboard”, all values from the visible part of the 3D graphic will be copied to the clipboard. The data format will be the same as when exporting data in ASCII/CSV: matrix, where the first row contains X values, the first column Y values, and the rest of the file are Z values in a tab delimited table.
Displaying color map
By selecting the "3D tools/Show color map" option in the context menu of the 3D graphic or in the main menu, you can turn on the display of the color map next to the graphic:
To display color map by default on all new 3D-graphics or spectrograms, set the corresponding option in the Application settings dialog.