How to do 3d line plots

Richard Owlett

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Jul 18, 2007, 4:32:15 PM7/18/07

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Basically I wish to plot a path thru 3d space.
I've been looking at Plotchart ( create3DPlot and $plot3d plotdata )
with no luck.

Please point me in right direction. Examples appreciated. Thanks.

Michael Schlenker

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Jul 19, 2007, 5:17:56 PM7/19/07

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Richard Owlett schrieb:

Plot a path through 3D space sounds like you want something like one of
the OpenGL extensions (e.g. http://www.tcl3d.org).

If its more a thing like GIS pathes you might look at something like
GRASS, which has a Tk based GUI.

Michael

Arjen Markus

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Jul 20, 2007, 2:30:03 AM7/20/07

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Hm, it should not be too difficult to extend Plotchart
with such a facility, but that would come after my holidays :).

Drop me a note if you are interested in that.

Regards,

Arjen

Richard Owlett

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Jul 20, 2007, 8:01:43 AM7/20/07

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Michael Schlenker wrote:
> Richard Owlett schrieb:
>
>>Basically I wish to plot a path thru 3d space.
>>I've been looking at Plotchart ( create3DPlot and $plot3d plotdata )
>>with no luck.
>>
>>Please point me in right direction. Examples appreciated. Thanks.
>
> Plot a path through 3D space sounds like you want something like one of
> the OpenGL extensions (e.g. http://www.tcl3d.org).

Thank you for the link. I've only had a chance to look at the opengl
samples -- I've heard of it before. Typical of the problems I run into,
it seems to be simultaneously too much _AND_ too little. Their audience
is heavily orientated towards rendering 3D solids (with *IMPRESSIVE*
results). But I want at most *A* 3 dimensional line. I have also been
mulling the idea of a 3D scatter plot.

In another thread, someone was referred to Tkzinc. That appears to have
the same difficulty from my perspective.

I may revert to using Scilab for my plotting. Originally I was refferred
to TclTk to simplify data gathering. It turned out it could handle my
minimal data reduction chores. If I could master Plotchart, all could be
done in TclTk.

>
> If its more a thing like GIS pathes you might look at something like
> GRASS, which has a Tk based GUI.

No, that's not related to my interests.

Uwe Klein

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Jul 20, 2007, 9:03:34 AM7/20/07

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Hey,
I've never tried this but

gnuplot has a variety of 3d modes.

_and_

gnuplot can do output to a tcl canvas.

gnuplot:
http://www.gnuplot.info/

G!
uwe

Richard Owlett

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Jul 20, 2007, 10:09:53 AM7/20/07

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Arjen Markus wrote:

Thank you. It was your page, http://wiki.tcl.tk/18167 , which was
tantalizing me ;) I'm newbie enough to not know how to follow up on
"They are all part of the CVS repository, so for the most recent
versions, I will refer you to the Tklib project."

I'm looking for the 3D equivalent of createXYPlot and related commands.

Richard Owlett

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Jul 20, 2007, 1:58:56 PM7/20/07

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Richard Owlett wrote:

> Arjen Markus said:
>
> You will need to get a recent version of Plotchart - from the CVS
> repository - see the receipes on the site or by downloading the
> sources one by one.
>
> I am confident people on the comp.lang.tcl newsgroup can help you
> with retrieving and installing Tklib.

I am completely lost. I have never used CVS.

I managed to download the scrip[t that generates the samples shown on
http://wiki.tcl.tk/18167 . That was as far as I could get.

Thank you.

Richard Owlett

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Jul 22, 2007, 7:27:35 AM7/22/07

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I've downloaded a current version of gnuplot and it plots my data
nicely. I didn't find a interface to Tcl however.[except one that will
continuously rotate the plot thru various views]. My OS is WinXP.

Uwe Klein

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Jul 22, 2007, 1:30:58 PM7/22/07

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Richard Owlett wrote:

> I've downloaded a current version of gnuplot and it plots my data
> nicely. I didn't find a interface to Tcl however.[except one that will
> continuously rotate the plot thru various views]. My OS is WinXP.
>

gnuplot has a terminal driver for the Tk canvas.

in a tcl shell do

#start
package require Tk

set gpcmds "
set terminal tkcanvas
plot sin(x)
"

set canvcmds [ exec gnuplot << $gpcmds ]

eval $canvcmds

canvas .c ; pack .c

gnuplot .c

#end

G!
uwe

Richard Owlett

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Jul 22, 2007, 4:51:37 PM7/22/07

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I had to modify the code to reflect path to executable and its name.

package require Tk
set gpcmds "
set terminal tkcanvas
plot sin(x)
"

set canvcmds [ exec "G:\\gnuplot\\bin\\pgnuplot" << $gpcmds ]

eval $canvcmds
canvas .c ; pack .c

pgnuplot .c

In response to the last line I receive

invalid command name "gnuplot"

What is my problem?
I am using ActiveStates distribution under WinXP Pro SP2.

Uwe Klein

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Jul 23, 2007, 2:05:56 AM7/23/07

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print the content of $canvcmds to the screen or a printer
the gnuplot output is essentially a script that defines
a couple of procs.

proc gnuplot can {
.....................
# lots of [expr] and
# [$can create ...] stuff
}
proc gnuplot_plotarea {} {
...........
# returns the bbbox of the plot
}
proc gnuplot_axisranges {} {
..............
# returns the x and y scale range and the actual used range
}

either you made some typing mistake or the [eval] went astray.

uwe

suchenwi

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Jul 23, 2007, 4:22:39 AM7/23/07

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On 22 Jul., 22:51, Richard Owlett <rowl...@atlascomm.net> wrote:

> I had to modify the code to reflect path to executable and its name.
>
> package require Tk
> set gpcmds "
> set terminal tkcanvas
> plot sin(x)
> "
> set canvcmds [ exec "G:\\gnuplot\\bin\\pgnuplot" << $gpcmds ]
> eval $canvcmds
> canvas .c ; pack .c
> pgnuplot .c
>
> In response to the last line I receive
>
> invalid command name "gnuplot"
>
> What is my problem?
> I am using ActiveStates distribution under WinXP Pro SP2

I'd first just add
puts $canvcmds
after the exec line, to see what is in it. From context I guess that
it should define a proc named gnuplot...

Esa Heikkinen

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Jul 23, 2007, 5:50:03 AM7/23/07

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Richard Owlett kirjoitti:

Hi

I am little surprised. Is it really possible to run gnuplot inside TCL
in canvas ? I was thinking the gnuplot was only "external" program.

---
Esa

Richard Owlett

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Jul 23, 2007, 8:17:06 AM7/23/07

to

Printing $canvcmds gave a blank line until I changed

set canvcmds [ exec "G:\\gnuplot\\bin\\pgnuplot" << $gpcmds ]

to

set canvcmds { exec "G:\\gnuplot\\bin\\pgnuplot" << $gpcmds }

It still doesn't work. Has anyone else attempted to do this on a
Windows(tm) system. I notice that the help file lists many cautions
about using exec on Windows(tm) systems.

suchenwi

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Jul 23, 2007, 9:01:01 AM7/23/07

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On 23 Jul., 14:17, Richard Owlett <rowl...@atlascomm.net> wrote:

> Printing $canvcmds gave a blank line until I changed
> set canvcmds [ exec "G:\\gnuplot\\bin\\pgnuplot" << $gpcmds ]
> to
> set canvcmds { exec "G:\\gnuplot\\bin\\pgnuplot" << $gpcmds }
>

That does something very differently, and probably not the thing
wanted.

> It still doesn't work. Has anyone else attempted to do this on a
> Windows(tm) system. I notice that the help file lists many cautions

> about using exec on Windows(tm) systems.-

I just downloaded, on a Win XP box,
http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/development/binaries/gp41-July18_2006-winbin.zip

and can confirm that the exec for that particular pgnuplot.exe returns
"".

Uwe Klein

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Jul 27, 2007, 5:48:04 AM7/27/07

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No, and yes it is.

you [exec] gnuplot with the commands of your choice.
In this case you advise gnuplot to use its "tkcanvas" driver
for output.
( Tcl as in Tool Control Language ;-)

The output is a script that creates three procs.
[gnuplot] containing all the commands to create your plot as
elements on a tkcanvas. ( see prev posting for details )

[gnuplot_plotarea] to know about the bbox

and
[gnuplot_axisranges] to know about used and plotted
axis ranges.

proc gnuplot can {
.....................
# lots of [expr] and
# [$can create ...] stuff
}
proc gnuplot_plotarea {} {
...........
# returns the bbbox of the plot
}
proc gnuplot_axisranges {} {
..............
# returns the x and y scale range and the actual used range
}

>
>
> ---
> Esa
uwe