Hi everyone,

I am making some software for a friend that among other things could use 3D visualization (surface plot). Any suggestions? This is not for a profit or work and it is not a must-have but it would be nice to have. I would prefer something open source or free if possible.

By 3D I don't mean 2D graphs that are skewed to look 3D ( that i can do with System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization.Charting). I am looking for a (preferably free or low cost) control such as ActiveX 3D surface plot.

alternatively I could make a dirty "3D" using GDI etc.

suggestions?

 

Typing "3d Plot" in the Ubuntu Software Center gives me these results:

QtiPlot
Euler
r-cran-misc3d
PLplot
qwtplot3d

Years ago, I used to use MS Excel for 3D plotting.

 

Hi everyone,

I am making some software for a friend that among other things could use 3D visualization (surface plot).

I am looking for a (preferably free or low cost) control such as ActiveX 3D surface plot.

suggestions?

Didn't you just make one?

If you are looking for a control such as ActiveX 3D, why not use ActiveX 3D?

I'm not trying to be too facetiious (okay, a little bit facetious, yes). If ActiveX 3D is not suitable, then for someone to make a reasonable suggestion it would be very helpful to know why it is not suitable.

 

that you joey, that was great.

@ WBahn, no i do programming here and there but i am not a software developer. i am looking for a ready made component if possible (drop it on a form and feed data into it as with 2D chart) - not learning new tools or programming environment, developing something from scratch for one-off kind a deal but, i'll bite the bullet if there are no easy pickings...

 

Ah. I think that helps clarify what you are looking for quite a bit. What you are doing is something well outside what I do (though I will be heading that way shortly) so I don't have any suggestions. Hopefully someone will.

 

I can't help with the "ready made component" but it's pretty trivial to do if you have any experience making graphics with lines and pixels.

Just plot X as horizontal (+X on screen), plot Y as diagonal (+X +Y on screen) and plot Z as vertical (+Y on screen).

It's not much harder than plotting a 2D chart.

 

I haven't used any drop-in 3D charts for Windows Forms, but this looks promising.

This one also looked promising:
http://www.doctohelp.com/superproducts/chartwinforms/

 

it's done and everyone is happy.

first example is done some 2 years ago in VB6, it is a scan of a dice plotted using basic GDI (plotting individual pixels) and something I wanted to avoid. the "3D" view was obtained by skewing the data from different profiles. flat surfaces extending to the left are from robot gripper that held the dice.

the current one is done using surface plot (here showing profile of a pen). the scan is inaccurate because i just moved sample by hand and I need to adjust the z-scale. this was based on
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/42174/High-performance-WPF-3D-Chart

back to BBQ and friends... ;-)

thanks everyone!