Hi,

I have, in a spreadsheet, a list of points that lie on the surface of a unit sphere.

Each point is described by its x,y and z coordinates. These points trace out a curvilinear path on the surface of the sphere.

In the spreadsheet, I can use charts to view any 2-D view, for example an xy view shows a projection onto the xy plane when looking from the z direction and so on.

But what I want to see is a single, integrated 3-D view. I want a 3-D rendered image of a sphere, with a path drawn on it.

I have no idea what software to use and no experience in 3D CAD. I've been looking at the program K3d, but it does not seem appropriate because it seems you can only import from drawing tools.

Any ideas?

Many thanks in advance.....

andrew

This sounds like a class on spreadsheets is needed.

Hi BW,

If you are meaning to imply that this is possible in Libre office, I don't agree, but please be so kind as to advise where the functionality is.

The 3D views are not available in my package for scatter plots etc.

Thanks.



Andrew.

I mean to imply it looks like someone needs a course on how to use spreadsheets in plotting charts.

Which software is used and its capabilities is left to them. Which too only takes a visit to their sight to look up what their software is capable of.

That sight too should have how to's and or the internet, being that you indicated Libre office, then the internet should be littered with this information, and their are even video's on this subject.

That in my option, it would be better and easier to use them and watch and learn then for me or anyone else to type out step by step instructions on how to select data and convert it into a chart. (if I even knew how to do such a thing).

using 'Libre office charting' in a search text box I got all kinds of how to's. Not to look like i am trying to push you off a cliff, but I think what is out there is already written up and might be better suited for you to learn from.

Hi BW,

Thanks for your inputs, and perhaps you do need a course on spreadsheets. It is hard, at first sight, to tell what kind of site you are talking about.

Again, we are talking about 3D or x,y,z plotting, not the usual 2D or x,y charts that are generically common.

Thanks...

Andrew.

Do you have youtube in your country? go there, and search it. You might find what you're looking for.

google, search for '3d plotting charts linux' learn how to use a search eng. type in how to use search eng. for key words to use in a search eng to get desired results.

cheers!

gnuplot has a 3D plotting capability. It's a command line tool with a (IMO) pretty steep learning curve.

I found this tutorial for LibreOffice.

As stated, some search effort on the OPs part would probably yield more information.

1 members found this post helpful.

I am not much of an office suite user any more, but would suggest GNUPlot as the perfect option for any 2D or 3D plotting tasks.

It has a bit of a learning curve, but not too steep. It supports interactive use allowing for rotations and zoom, among other things. You can find plenty of examples online and probably quickly adapt a working example to your own data.

* scasey types faster than I!

1 members found this post helpful.

The learning curve may be steep for some but if you run through all the demos that (usually) come with a GNUplot install you can usually find one that's close to what you need. There's also a ton of examples on the GNUplot web site. This one looks promising

Downside? From the description it appears that the OP will need to convert from Cartesian coordinates to spherical.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

and thanks to all concerned. GNUplot works, although there are a few details still to get on to. The demo suggested, which plots the world on a sphere, is very helpful. It was important to set the datafile separtor to comma, to get gnuplot to accept .csv output from s/sheet. I am still unsure, but it appears that I may not need to transform the data from cartesian into spherical. Still checking.

set mapping cartesian
set datafile separator comma

For the record, I had already seen the recommended libreoffice tutorial, which looks promising at first blush. Unfortunately, it is talking about 3-D views of bar charts etc, not scatter plots. Hence the need for something like gnuplot.

All my previous searches had thrown up CAD tools, not plotting tools - a category I could not search for because I didn't know it existed.

I am marking the thread solved.

Thanks again.

Andrew.