| iTool User's Guide: Visualizations |

## Visualization Creation Methods

Visualizations can be created either automatically or manually. The following sections discuss automatic and manual creation methods.

### Creating Visualizations Automatically

Visualizations can be created automatically in the following ways:

- By specifying some data when creating an iTool at the IDL Command Line. For example:

    myPlotData = RANDOMU(seed, 30)
    iPlot, myPlotData

These statements will create a new data item in the iTool Data Manager and create a new iPlot tool that visualizes the data in a line plot.

- By opening a file in an existing iTool, either by selecting File Open or using the Data Import Wizard (File Import...).

- By using the Data Import Wizard (File Import...) to import a variable from the IDL Session.

Both the Data Import Wizard and the process of using File Open are described in detail in Importing and Exporting Data.

Note Certain data types (such as binary or ASCII) may require you to supply IDL with further information before they can be visualized. For more information about reading certain data types into iTools, see Importing Data from a File.

IDL Online Help (March 01, 2006)