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CoPlot's Animated Graphs and Drawings
(for animating strip charts, spinning 3D graphs,
visualization of changes over time, animated gif files,
and viewing a series of graphs or drawings as if they were a movie)

There are several places in CoPlot with VCR-like buttons that let you easily animate CoPlot's graphs and drawings. CoPlot creates and displays the animations on-the-fly. These allow you to view a series of graphs or drawings as if they were a movie. They allow you to view large volumes of data in ways that aren't possible with static graphs.
  • Changing the Axis Range - CoPlot can repeatedly move the center of the X or Y axis' range. If you have long time series data, you can make a graph which shows a portion of the data's X axis range and then have CoPlot repeatedly move the center of the X axis so that it looks like a strip chart. For orthographic graphs, this changes the viewpoint. (See CoPlot's Edit : Graph : X Axis : Overview : Center Animation.)

    animatedxaxis.gif animatedortho.gif
    (These take a long time to download completely, but is worth the wait.)
     

  • Changing the Dataset - CoPlot can repeatedly change which column of Y or Z column of data is plotted. Here is an example where the Z column is changed. (See CoPlot's Edit : Graph : Dataset : 1 : Z Animation.)

    animated3dsurface.gif
    (This takes a long time to download completely, but is worth the wait.)
     

  • Spinning a 3D Graph- CoPlot can spin a 3D graph around a central vertical axis. (See CoPlot's Edit : Graph : Graph : Overview : 3D Spin Angle Animation.)

    animatedspinangle.gif
    (This takes a long time to download completely, but is worth the wait.)
     

  • Animating Drawing Objects - CoPlot can repeatedly change which group of drawing objects is visible. In this example, one text object ("CoPlot") is stored in the first group. A progressively rotated and progressively enlarged copy of that text object is stored in the second and subsequent groups. The groups are then displayed one at a time. (See CoPlot's Drawing : Groups : Animation.)

    animatedgroups.gif
    (This takes a long time to download completely, but is worth the wait.)
     

  • Animation via Macros - This method of animation is more work to set up than the other methods since it doesn't just involve pressing VCR-like buttons. A macro can repeatedly make a group of changes to a drawing and then redraw the drawing. In this example, a series of slightly different equations is generated and plotted. Although this method of animation is more work, it is extremely versatile. Many changes of any type may be made between each frame of the movie. (See CoPlot's Macro.)

    animated3dfunction.gif
    (This takes a long time to download completely, but is worth the wait.)

Animation On-The-Fly

The animated .gif files above are a pretty accurate simulation of actual animations which can be created on-the-fly by CoPlot. We could have made the animation in the animated .gif files smoother, but the files become much larger and slower to download.

Animated .gif Files

In addition to being able do to animations on-the-fly, CoPlot can create animated .gif files. The process is entirely under the user's control. You can open an animated .gif file, repeatedly add frames to it (images of the current drawing), and then close the file. In fact, all of the animated .gif files on this page were created within CoPlot.

 

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