3d scatter plot

[vtmike]

Hi,

Is there a way to make a 3d scatter plot in microsoft excel 2003?
Or any software available that will use the data from the excel spreadsheet to create a 3d scatter plot?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[GregLocock]

I assume you mean you have x y z triads and you want to fit a surface to them and then display the surface?


xlxtrfun will do that



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[vtmike]

I don't want to fit a surface, just a scatter plot...i mean just points in x y z triads...

 

[GregLocock]

Oh. Hmm. No I haven't seen a way of doing that except by devious means. By that I mean calculating the screen x y coordinates from a known viewpoint.



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[MintJulep]

Got CAD?

 

[electricpete]

If you happen to have grid-type data with equally spaced x data and equally spaced y data, then you might be able to use column chart, subtype 3-d column. x and y would be treated as category and series respectively.

Attached is an example.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

 

[electricpete]

... actually, my idea is pretty lame. The axes are not presented with 1:1:1 scale. It is more like a 3-d version of a bar chart than a 3-d version of an x-y chart.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

 

[vtmike]

Thanks everyone for the input..

electricpete:
I had tried working with the same thing but its nt what i am looking for.

MintJulep:
I have Solidworks 2008....I didn't know we can create 3d scatter plots in Solidworks? If you do then please let me know...

 

[btrueblood]

1. Create a part that will act as your data point (sphere, cube, wingnut...).
2. Create a new assembly file.
3. Insert a wingnut, then constrain it to be x distance away from the yz-plane, y from xz-plane, and z from xy-plane.
4. Repeat step 3 for remaining data points (could probably be automated with a script/macro).

 

[GregLocock]

http://www.andypope.info/charts/3drotate.htm

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[MikeHalloran]

It's a difficult problem even in CAD.

The problem with a cloud of points in 3D space is that computer screens and ordinary printers don't give you depth cues, so you don't know how far a point is behind or in front of the viewing plane. And rotating the viewpoint just makes different sets of points appear to coincide.

[ Just last month I found two lines that behaved oddly with object snaps. One of them was ~14,000 miles behind the viewing plane. Go ahead; zoom extents and fix that.
No, I have no idea how it got that way, but I have indications that it may have been copied to hundreds of other drawings.

Found other lines at similarly bizarre and not clearly related distances, too. All were inside blocks nested in blocks that were used everywhere. It's the sort of thing you might leave behind if you were leaving on bad terms... the AutoCAD equivalent of a programmer's code bomb. ]

In a CAD system, you might be able represent 3D scatter data as a perspective view of a 2D array of two- element lines. I.e. a given data point would be represented by a faint black line whose length is proportional to the distance of a colinear colored line from the xy plane, and the length of the colored line would represent the range of z values for all points with the line's xy value. Extend that to use two colors if there are three points, etc. Of course there would be no colored line, or maybe just a colored dot, at the end of the black line if there's only one z value for that xy pair.






Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[GregLocock]

here's a program I knocked up using the link I gave above, showing a stick and ball model of a suspension.




Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.