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iTool User's Guide: Working with Surfaces |
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The iSurface tool provides options for manipulating surface data. You can rotate as well as scale surfaces. These manipulations are described in the following sections.
Rotation tools are provided in the iSurface tool to make it easier to see all aspects of a 3-D surface visualization. Surfaces can be rotated freely or along an axis with the mouse, and they can be rotated in fixed or arbitrary increments from the Operations menu.
To rotate a surface freely or along an axis with the mouse:
on the Manipulator toolbar. The rotation sphere is displayed around the surface.
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. Click and drag to rotate the surface in the desired direction.
. Click and drag to rotate the surface along the axis in the desired direction.To rotate a surface in 90û increments left or right from the Operations menu:
To rotate a surface an arbitrary number of degrees from the Operations menu:
For more information, see Rotation.
Surfaces can be scaled freely, or scaling can be constrained to one or more dimensions.
To scale a surface freely:
To constrain scaling of a surface:
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For more information, see Scaling.
Annotations can be added to label or describe surface visualizations displayed in the iSurface tool.
The following types of annotations can be added to iSurface displays:
For more information on creating and using annotations, see Adding Annotations.
View Zoom allows you to zoom in or out on a specific area of the surface display area. To zoom in or out in View Zoom mode click Zoom
on the toolbar. For more information on working with View Zoom, see Zooming.
Canvas Zoom allows you to increase or decrease the magnification of the entire display canvas (which may contain multiple views, depending on the layout) by a specified percentage. Canvas Zoom is available by selecting the pull-down percentage list from the top of the tool just under the Help menu. For more information on working with Canvas Zoom, see Zooming.
To extract a line profile of part of your surface visualization in an iPlot window:
Once a line profile has been drawn, it will remain until deleted. The line may be translated (or its endpoints moved individually) by switching back to the arrows. If it is translated or edited, the profile plot will automatically update.
If you dismiss your Plot Profile window and wish to have it back again, from your iSurface window, with the line selected, choose Operations
Plot Profile and the Plot Profile window will reappear.
IDL Online Help (March 01, 2006)