Viewing XY and XYZ Data

Applies to: 2D, 3D and Studio.

Clicking a data node's graph in the main window opens that node in its data viewer -- the 2D viewer for an XY node, the 3D viewer for an XYZ node. Both are the full graph environment applied to one data set: the whole toolbar, the whole settings dialogs, and a small column of buttons down the left side for the things you do with the data rather than to the graph.

The two viewers are deliberately alike. Where they differ, the difference is forced by the dimensionality and is called out in What Differs, and Why below.

1. The 3D Data Viewer

The left column, top to bottom:

· OK and Cancel close the viewer. Nothing in the data is altered either way; they differ only in whether the graph settings you changed are kept.

· Add and Update store this view as a notebook node -- Add creates one, Update replaces the node you arrived from.

· Use for Tree Data makes the current appearance the setting for every raw 3D data node in the notebook. See the caution below.

· Help.

· Four small graphic buttons: Copy (the XYZ data to the clipboard), Save (to a data file), List (a scrollable table of the values), and Word/RTF (stream the graph to Microsoft Word or save it as an RTF file).

The four graphic buttons moved below Help on 2026-09-22, at the author's request: they draw their own icons and previously sat between Cancel and Help, where the column read as if a button were missing.

Listing a large grid. The List button chooses its viewer by size. A short list opens in the rich-text viewer, which supports zoned selection and copy; a long one -- anything over about a hundred and thirty rows -- opens in the plain scrolling viewer instead, which has no selection zones but will scroll a grid of any practical size. A 101 x 101 digitization is 10,201 rows and opens there.

Streaming the graph to Word. The fourth button opens the Word export dialog and streams the surface as a picture, or saves it as an RTF file. This is the graph only; for the numbers use Copy or Save.

2. The 2D Data Viewer

The same shape: OK and Cancel, Add Node and Update Node, Use for Tree Data, Help, and the same four graphic buttons -- Copy, Save, List and Word/RTF -- doing the same four things for XY data.

3. Use for Tree Data -- Read This Before Pressing It

Both viewers carry this button and it behaves the same way in each: it takes the appearance you have set up here and makes it the appearance of every raw data node of that dimension in the notebook.

It is the one action in the product that reaches out of its dialog and changes the application's appearance, and the previous setting is not kept anywhere -- so it cannot be undone by pressing something else. That is why it asks you to confirm, and why it is not called "Set Defaults".

In the 3D viewer the confirmation now names the rendering you are about to install -- "a 2D contour", "a 3D gradient" or "a 3D shaded surface" -- because the representation travels with the colours and viewpoint. Setting a shaded surface as the tree default means every 3D data node is drawn shaded from then on, and the main window graph you clicked to get here will change the moment you press Yes.

The setting is remembered between sessions.

4. What Differs, and Why

· The 3D viewer carries a representation; the 2D viewer does not. An XYZ surface can be drawn as a 3D gradient, a 3D shaded surface or a 2D contour, and that choice is part of what "Use for Tree Data" installs. An XY curve has no equivalent choice.

· Clicking a main-window 3D graph enters the viewer in the tree's current representation. If your data nodes are set to draw as contours, the viewer opens showing the contour, not a gradient -- the procedure starts in the state the main window was showing.

· Point display. On a dense surface the data points can bury the surface entirely. The toolbar's Overlay Data on Surface or Contour button hides and shows them. The viewer always opens in the state it was handed; it is the comparison procedures that decide for themselves whether points would be legible.