Instructions - Surface Plot Tool

Purpose

The purpose of this applet is to supply a 3D graphing utility that can plot both multivariable functions and sets of points.

Fundamentals

The black box in the top left corner is the area where your 3D graph and/or plot will be. To view your graph and/or plot the appropriate checkboxes must be checked in the 'Show' panel at the top middle part of the applet. In order to edit the equation for the function you are graphing, select the input box in the 'Function' panel at the bottom left part of the applet and type in your new equation. To set in place any changes you have made thus far you can always click the 'Plot' button if the graph wasn't automatically updated.

In order to make your own plot you must select the text box in the center of the applet and type in points in this fashion:
  (1,2,3)
  (2,4,6)
  (.1,.3,-1)
Once you have done that click the plot button.

Features

To change the bounds of the graph, find the appropriately labeled text box in the 'Surface' panel on the right side of the applet and make the changes you wish to make. You may also want change the resolution of your graph in this panel; increasing the resolution will make the the graph more accurate and the squares you see that make up the graph will get smaller, whereas decreasing does the exact opposite. Make sure you only enter whole numbers greater than 5 for the resolution, otherwise you will get errors.

Also in the 'Surface' panel is the 'Grid Style' menu. This menu has two options, Solid, and Wireframe. These options will change the style of how the surface is drawn. When selected as 'Solid', the graph will be drawn as a blanket of filled-in quadrilaterals. When selected as 'Wireframe', the graph will be drawn as a blanket of empty quadrilaterals. Right under the 'Grid Style' menu is the 'Bounding Box' menu. In this menu you have four options: 'No box' - this option displays no box or axis that could be used as a reference for your surface and/or plot; 'White box' - this option will put a white box surrounding your surface and/or plot showing the bounds you have set.; 'R-x G-y B-z box' - this is the same as the 'White box' option only the lines that run parallel to the X-Axis are shown red, Y-Axis lines are shown green, and Z-Axis lines are shown blue; 'Axis' - displays three lines emanating from the origin, the X-Axis is shown red, Y-Axis green, and Z-Axis blue. Finally the last option in the 'Surface' panel is the 'Smooth Surface' option. This option works well to give a more realistic representation of the surface when displayed in lower resolutions.

At the bottom middle of the applet you will find the 'Plot Type' panel. Here you can select how you wish to display your plot, either Connected or Scattered. If you wish to display more than one plot at a time just type 'newgraph' on a line by itself and then the points following that line will be in a new data set. If you want the new plot to have a color just replace 'newgraph' with either 'bluegraph', 'redgraph', 'greengraph', 'cyangraph', 'graygraph', 'magentagraph', 'yellowgraph', 'orange', 'purplegraph', or 'crimsongraph'.