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Scatter 3D


A utility for displaying n-dimensional data.

For full details on using the program, click the help (?) button after starting the program. Some key features are as follows:

Data Source

Data are read from simple text files, in which each point occupies a row of the text file, and the coordinates of the point are tab-, comma- or space-separated columns within the row.

Data can have as many dimensions as you like; you choose which 3 coordinates to display from within the programme. A 4th coordinate can be used as an index into a 256-color table.

Loading:
Either
click the Load button and select the file using the standard Open dialog,
or drop the file into the program using drag-and-drop from Windows Explore
or click the Paste button to paste data copied from external programmes such as Excel.

Rotation, Zoom and Autoscaling

You can set the graph to rotate automatically. You can zoom in to selected data points in the graph by drawing around the region containing them. You can see all the data by selecting the Autoscale options. You can click on a point to see its coordinate values.

Animation

Scatter3D can export an animated 360-degree view of the 3-D cluster image as an avi file which can be used in presentations. The avi file can be converted to a gif file by external programs for display on the web as above.

Obtaining Scatter3D

Scatter3D is free software. To obtain the program:

  1. Download the file Scatter3DSU.zip and save it to a known location.
  2. Right-click the file and select Explore to reveal its contents (setup.exe and Scatter3DSU.msi).
  3. Double-click setup.exe and follow the on-screen instructions.
  4. You can now delete the file Scatter3DSU.zip.

Please note that Scatter3D comes with no guarantees whatsoever, and although considerable effort has been made to ensure that it works correctly, you use it at your own risk.

Latest version

Scatter3D version 2.0, released July 2007.

OpenGL

Scatter3D uses OpenGL for the 3-D graphics. In Windows XP this is supported through the device drivers, so if you have problems running the program make sure that you have the latest driver for your video card, and that it is OpenGL-compatible.

Feedback

If you make use of Scatter3D, or have any comments on it, I would be glad to hear by e-mail.

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