Tecplot 360

21 Plotting Tips
Presentation plots and visual data analysis aspire to illuminate and draw attention to your data, as well as present your scientic ndings. As Plato said, Beauty is the splendor of the truth.
Strategy Six Accuracy
Be sure to represent your data accurately. Avoid hiding edges and imperfections with lighting, viewing angles and smoothing. Steer clear of high degrees of perspective projection when the relative size of various plot parts is important. And always cite a reference for the data.

21 Plotting and Data Visualization Strategies

Design and Layout Strategies
Strategy One Know Your Audience
Customize your presentations to suit your audience. If a group is unfamiliar with your research, be sure to provide adequate background information. On the other hand, if you are presenting to experts who can make assumptions about the data, simply highlight the key ideas in your layout.

Strategy Seven Presentation Output

Raster images (TIFF, PNG, JPEG, SWF-Flash, and AVI) are the most versatile output formats. They support translucency, are web and presentation software friendly, and print easily. When outputting raster images, export the exact size you need, thus creating new output for every desired display size. Avoid stretching raster images beyond your target size, or you will start to lose resolution and quality. Resizing raster images distorts the original pixel information).

Strategy Two Rule of Thirds

You want your plot layouts to be visually exciting and engage the viewers interest. Simply centering your images and animations rarely produces the wow effect you are looking for. One of the best ways to bring visual energy to your data is to divide your layout into thirds vertically and horizontally, forming four points of equal distance. Aligning the most important objects (titles, plots, images) to these points will make your layouts more engaging.

Strategy Eight Paint a Complete Picture

In the image below, overlaid XY graphs allow viewers to easily associate each XY plot with specic 3D slices. Labels identify actual contour values on the wing versus using a look-up table. In general, embedding details within your plot like this helps the viewer avoid searching the page for further explanation. Combining different plot types in a layout also paints a more complete picture than several independent images. Likewise, multiple views of the same or interrelated data makes it easier to comprehend your results.

Strategy Three Annotation

Text & Fonts - When using multiple text blocks, create an obvious and consistent size hierarchy that makes a distinct difference between titles and sub-titles. Avoid cluttering the layout with different fonts. Your message will get lost in a jumble of fonts, so use no more than two one for headings and one for text. As an alternative, use different fonts within the same font family, such as bold for the main title and regular for secondary headers. Avoid overlapping labels or text. Reverses - The eye is naturally drawn to reversed type (white or light text on black or dark background) so use it sparingly. Reverses are easy to read, but more tiring to the eyes. Also, thin fonts tend to disappear when reversed. Numbers - Use truncated numbers for contour levels, axis labeling, reference vector magnitude, and reference scatter size. Keys - Include a clearly dened color legend, as well as a title block with company name, logo and plot title. Boxes - When using box borders, always offset text from the edges with a nice margin. Boxes and rules can be a good way to show off important information. Just make sure not to use a box for every element, or nothing will stand out from the crowd. Arrows - Draw attention to objects of interest with arrows and text.

Strategy Four Color

Use color for impact. If it is thrown around everywhere, it loses that effect. Use a contrasting color as your background to provide optimum readability. If you have multiple colors, use a white background. Do not use complementary colors such as blue and orange. When these two colors are used side by side, the eye has trouble focusing on both at the same time. In general, make sure eyes are drawn to important data and not insignicant but visually prominent objects (avoid using lots of color at the sides of your plots). White and empty space is good let your data speak for itself. Also beware, dark backgrounds may look good on your monitor, but display poorly when projected.

Strategy Nine Alignment and Balance

Line up various objects and strive to create balance within your workspace. Everything on your page should align with something else. Tecplots grid is an effective tool to ensure that text and images align. Only break alignment for emphasis within a layout and use it sparingly. Try using text, axes, and geometries to balance the layout.

Strategy Five Size

Make sure to keep your nal plot size in mind when adding annotation. Plots destined for publication need large details. Huge on-screen text results in readable published text. One measure of importance is size. Use larger graphics to communicate the most important goals of your layout. Smaller graphics are of lesser importance. When space is at a premium, drop the smaller elements rst they are less important.

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Tecplot Specic Strategies

Strategy Ten Think 3D
Displaying information in three dimensions provides realism and perspective. Adding 3D objects like a cylinder or 3D scatter symbols will help viewers understand what they are seeing.

Strategy Nineteen Customizing

Use the tecplot.cfg le to customize Tecplot with your favorite settings. Tecplot. cfg controls default frame attributes, axis attributes, plot attributes and so forth. You can also set a consistent Tecplot environment where dialogs are always in the same screen location.

Strategy Twenty Animations

Export animations the exact size you want for presentations. It is necessary to create new animations for every desired display size. Animations cannot be resized or reshaped without distortion. Always use PowerPoints Best scale for slide show options to align animation pixels with the target display resolution. Do not use multiple color tables for PowerPoint AVI animations. They are not supported.

Strategy Eleven Frame-Linking

Use frame-linking to quickly edit similar-style frame groups. Additionally link and overlay frames to make specialty plots that would otherwise be impossible.

Strategy Twelve Quick Macro Panel

Use the Quick Macro Panel (QMP) to access commonly used macros with one click. Analyze your operations and identify repetitive tasks. Create macros that perform these operations and place them in the QMP The easiest way to build . macros is to use the Macro Record feature, then edit unwanted steps in a text editor.

Strategy Twenty-One Large Data Files

Tecplot reads very large data les faster by rst selecting Cache Only Lightweight Graphics Objects in the Display Performance dialog. Select Do Not Cache Graphics when RAM cannot handle both the display list and raw data. Use the Load Data File Options dialog to load and display your data faster. Use IJK-Skipping when your plot is so ne that its appearance is not noticeably affected with a skip factor. Use Zone options with large numbers of zones. Load only the zones you want to see, then select Show First Zone Only. Tecplot reads all the selected zones, but only performs up-front preprocessing on the rst zone, therefore the rst image displays much faster. Use Variable options when you have lots of variables in your data set, but use only a few in your plot. Loading only used variables will reduce memory usage to a fraction of the original amount.

Strategy Thirteen Zooming on Multiple Frames

To zoom in or out on multiple frames, click and drag your mouse with the middle button while holding down the Shift key.

Strategy Fourteen Loading Excel Data

Use Tecplots Excel Add-in to quickly load Excel data into Tecplot (Windows only). Once the Add-in (RunTecplot.xla) is loaded, a Tecplot button is added to the Excel toolbar. Simply highlight the Excel data you wish to plot and click the Tecplot button. Tecplot will launch with your Excel data loaded.

Strategy Fifteen Exploring Transient Solutions

Use the DVD-like controls on the sidebar to play, pause, step forward and step backward through a transient solution. Set the play operation to forward, backward, loop or bounce to cycle through the time steps.

Strategy Sixteen Continuous Color Flooding

Select Continuous color ood on the Contours Details dialog for smooth color ooding. This is much faster than using 200 contour levels for a similar effect.

Strategy Seventeen Slice Shortcuts

When using the Slice tool, type X, Y, or Z on the keyboard to quickly shift slices between X-, Y-, and Z-planes. Use Shift-click to add a second slice, then type a number (1 through 9) to add the corresponding number of intermediate slices.

Strategy Eighteen - Placing Streamlines

Place streamlines using the slice tool. Interactively insert and move a slice to a region of interest, then click on a desired location on the slice to seed a streamline with the Streamline tool. For large models, use the Placement Plane option to quickly move a placement plane to a desired location.

TecplotView Enjoy the

TM

www.tecplot.com

1.800.676.7568