9.2.7 The (Plot Details) Planes Tab

In a 3D graph in the Cartesian coordinate system, you can control the position and display of the XY, YZ, ZX and multiple additonal planes (including the front planes of your 3D graphs).

To control the display of the 3D planes, edit the Planes tab of the layer's Plot Details dialog box.

Note that this tab is also available at the layer level in 2D waterfall graphs but control is limited to the XY, YZ, ZX planes. In a 3D Ternary Colormap Surface, 3D Tetrahedral and 3D Ternary Symbol, you are allowed to control four planes, which we designate XY, YZh, ZhX, and ZiZh.


Planes tab for general 3D graphs	Planes tab for 3D Ternary/Tetrahedral graph

1 Grid Lines
2 Position
3 Percent/Value
4 Color
5 Transparency
6 Additional Plane
7 Cube
- 7.1 Front Corner
- 7.2 Whole Cube/Prism
8 Plane Border

Grid Lines

These check boxes control whether grid lines will be displayed in the corresponding plane.

Note: If this box is unchecked, then grid lines will be hidden in that plane, even if the Show box in Grids tab is selected in the Axis dialog.

Position

These check boxes are used to automatically re-display the back plane when the graph is rotated such that one of the planes shifts to the front.

There are three selections to specify the position of the plane.

Auto	Keep the original position of the plane.
%From Bottom	The %From Bottom specifies the position of the plane relative to the bottom of its orthogonal axis, as a percentage of the axis' length.
At Position=	Specify the position of the plane directly.

Percent/Value

Enter Percent while %From Bottom is selected from the position drop-down list.

Enter position value while At Position = is selected in the position drop-down list.

Color

The Color text box specifies the associated plane color.

Transparency

Specify the transparency of the plane color.

Additional Plane

For general 3D graphs, you are allowed to add additional planes, besides the coordinate XY/YZ/ZX planes shown by default.

If you just want to add one additional plane, you can select the check box in front of last plane, and then set the display and postion of the plane.

If you want to add more than one plane, you can click the button after the last plane to open the Additional Plane dialog. This dialog allows you to add multiple planes at different directions.

To add, remove or select the additional plane(s)
By default, a "Top XY Plane" will be shown in the left panel, you can click Add button to add more planes. To remove a plane, you can select the plane to click Remove button to remove it.

To customize multiple planes together, you can press the mouse right-key and drag to select multiple planes, do settings for them together in the right panel.

To show or hide the plane
Check or uncheck the Show check box to decide whether show this plane. Only when you checked Show check box, the following display and position controls can be available.

To set the direction of the plane
Select XY, YZ or ZX from the drop-down list to set the direction of the plane. Please note, if the directions of the selected planes in left panel are different, the Plane drop-dow list will be unavailable.

To show the grid lines on the plane
Check or uncheck Grid Lines to decide whether to show grid lines on the plane. The style of grid lines on additional plane will follow that in the related coordinate plane.

To set the position of the plane
You can use the Position combo box to set the position of the plane(s).

There are three ways to specify the position of the plane:

Auto: Only Top XY, Right YZ, or Front ZX plane will show.
% From Bottom: Specify the position of the plane relative to the bottom/left/back of its orthogonal axis, as a percentage of the axis length.
At Position: Specify the position of the plane by axis value directly.

Once you set Position to At Position= or % From Bottom, the name of the planes will show the position information directly.

If you selected multiple planes in left panel and set Position to At Position= or % From Bottom, you can enter the position values with space seperaters in the following box directly to set the positions together.

Note: If you want to use a cell value to define the position of the additional plane, you should first define a named range and then use this named range to specify the postion of the plane.

To change the color or transparency of the plane
Use Color control to set the color for the plane(s); and Transparency control to change the transparency of the plane.

Note:

Once you clicked OK button to close the Additional Plane dialog, the last edited plane will be shown under the coordinate planes. To further customize the other planes, you should reopen the Additional Plane dialog.
All these planes you set up can only be shown in the graph after you clicked OK button in Additional Plane dialog and Apply or OK button in Plot Details dialog.
The Additional Plane dialog can also be opened by the button on the Mini Toolbar for 3D graphs. And, all additional planes will be listed under this drop-down list, you can show or hide them by checking or unchecking the items.