13.0 Pseudocolor plot attributes

Pseudocolor plot attributes menu item

This item pops up a window that allows you to set plot attributes for pseudocolor plots. If you select a pseudocolor plot from the Active plots list in the MeshTV Main window, then attributes you change and apply will be applied to the selected plot. Unselected pseudocolor plots will not be changed. If you select this item without selecting a pseudocolor plot first, you will have to select a pseudocolor plot before you can apply the changes. Note that if you make any changes and then select a pseudocolor plot, you will lose your changes since the window will update with the attributes of the selected plot.

You can modify the default settings for attributes of future plots by opening this window, making your changes, and then pressing the Make default button. This affects only future plots, not existing ones, and stays in effect only for the remainder of the current MeshTV session unless you also select Save settings from the File menu.

Pseudocolor plot attributes window

The Pseudocolor plot attributes window looks like Pseudocolor attributes , if you are using MeshTV's defaults. If you aren't, the values might be different.

This window allows you to set the attributes assigned to existing or future pseudocolor plots. The attributes include things like whether the legend will be shown, whether to display the data as nodal, zonal, or with its natural centering, and which data limits to use when making the plot.

If you don't see a description for an item in this window, check in the Shared items section near the front of the chapter.

Centering toggles

These toggles determine how data in the pseudocolor plot is shown. Natural indicates to display the data with its natural centering. This means that node-centered data will be displayed at the nodes with colors being linearly interpolated between the nodes, and zone-centered data will be displayed as zonal values, giving a slightly "blocky" look to the picture. If you select nodal , then all information will be displayed at the nodes with color interpolated between. This will produce a smoother picture, but for variables which are actually zone-centered, you will lose some data (local minima and maxima). If you select zonal , all data will be displayed as if they were zone-centered. This will produce a blockier picture. Again, this will blur out minima/maxima for node-centered data.

Limits toggle

If you want to restrict the range of data used by the pseudocolor plot to generate its output, this is the option to use. Once you select this button, the Min and Max text fields will become active, and you can enter in the range to use. You can change one or both fields.

Min text field

This text field becomes active once the Limits toggle button is selected. When the field contains the string "off," the actual data minimum is used, else the pseudocolor plot uses the number entered in the text field as the minimum number. When a user-supplied number is used, all data values below this minimum map to the same color as the user-supplied minimum.

Max text field

This text field becomes active once the Limits toggle button is selected. When the field contains the string "off," the actual data maximum is used, else the pseudocolor plot uses the number entered in the text field as the maximum number. When a user-supplied number is used, all data values above this maximum map to the same color as the user-supplied maximum.

Scale radio buttons

These radio buttons determine the type of scaling used to display the data in the pseudocolor plot. There are three types of scaling: linear , log , and skew . Linear, which is the default, uses a linear mapping of data values to color values. Log scaling is used to map small ranges of data to larger ranges of color. Skew scaling goes one step further by using an exponential function based on a skew factor to adjust the mapping of data to color. The function used in skew scaling is (s^d - 1) / (s - 1) where s is a scale factor greater than zero and d is a data value that has been mapped into a range from zero to one. You control how data is mapped to colors by changing the skew factor. A skew factor of one is equivalent to linear scaling but values either smaller or larger than one produce curves that will map either the high or low end of the data to a larger color range.

Skew factor text field

This text field becomes active once the pseudocolor scale has been set to skew. The skew factor text field is used to specify the skew factor used during skew scaling. Values used for the skew factor are real numbers greater than zero. A skew factor of 1 is equivalent to linear scaling while values like 0.1, 100 will map the high or low pseudocolor plot data to larger color ranges in order to better highlight differences in data values. When linear or log scaling are being used, this text field is disabled.

Lighting toggle

This toggle turns lighting on/off for the current pseudocolor plot. Note that this only affects 3D plots. Changing the value of this attribute will not change the appearance of a 2D plot. Lighting calculations significantly increase the time it takes to render a scene, so if speed is a necessity, then it might be best to turn lighting off. However, lighting adds detail and depth to a pseudocolor plot, two characteristics important for movies. If your goal is to produce a movie file from a sequence of pseudocolor plots, then lit pseudocolor plots will probably look the best.

Pseudocolor plot attributes