| iTool User's Guide: Working with Surfaces |

## Displaying Surfaces

Three-dimensional visualizations of surfaces can be displayed in the iSurface window.

To open an iSurface window, do one of the following:

- At the IDL command line, enter `ISURFACE`

- From an iTool window, select File New and select iSurface

Surface data can be displayed by specifying data parameters at the IDL command line, or by importing a binary or ASCII text file containing surface data.

To import a file containing surface data into the iSurface tool:

1. Select File Open from the iSurface tool and locate the file to open. For example, from your IDL `examples/data` directory, select `idemosurf.dat`.

2. Double-click the filename or select the filename and click Open to open the surface data file. You will be prompted to enter information regarding your file type (for example, ASCII or binary). For more information on entering this information and on importing data, see Importing and Exporting Data. In this example, enter demosurface for your template name and then select New Field and specify demosurface as the Field Name and specify it as a two-dimensional 200 by 200 Floating type.

3. Then select OK and OK to dismiss and visualize.

Figure 11-1: Surface Data Visualized in iSurface

Figure 11-1: Surface Data Visualized in iSurface

IDL Online Help (March 01, 2006)