PL-SGI(1)

NAME
pl-sgi - display UnixPlot on a Silicon Graphics workstation

SYNOPSIS
pl-sgi [-f] [-n] [-t thickness] [unix_plot]

DESCRIPTION
Pl-sgi runs only on the Silicon Graphics 3030 and 4D series workstations. It takes an extended UnixPlot file or files as input and draws then on the display. If your system has a knob and button box the knobs control rotations and translations and the button box has several pre-defined views and options built in. Specifically, the left row of knobs from top down are X, Y, and Z rotations, and the right row are X, Y, and Z translations and Scale. The top row of buttons are: ortho view, perspective view, and reset view, and the lower two rows of buttons are the same predefined orientations that the mged(1) editor uses.

The -n flag indicates that the plot is intended for display at NTSC resolution. The display hardware is set for NTSC video output. The -t flag specifies the thickening (pixel width) of each line. By default, lines are only a single pixel wide. A thickness value of one or two is usually good when making 35mm slides, while a thickness value of three or four is usually best when making NTSC videotape recordings.

The three mouse button are: left - zoom out (.5x smaller), middle - zoom in (2x larger), right - gives you a small menu of options. The default choice is to center the current point (the one under the cursor at the time of the mouse press). Menu options also include turning coordinate axis on and off, and outputting the current "center" point after each repaint (although in 3D with combined rotates and translates you will probably find this value to be of little use). If you have a Dunn Instruments film recorder connected to your workstation, and the dunnsnap(1) program is installed, then a menu selection can be made to snap a picture of the current view.

If you are running under a window system (which SGI seems to force you to do these days) then the -f option tells the program to use the full screen for its display, i.e. it creates a window with the borders just beyond the edge of the display.

SALES HYPE
The full power of floating point plotting can be seen in this kind of environment, where multiple plots can be overlayed in their natural coordinate scale, and one can zoom in or out over several orders of magnitude without loss of precision.

BUGS
The predefined views also change the centering and scale; they should only affect the rotation. There is no substitute yet for the knob and button box for those that don't have one. Even though this program has been growing new features for some time, there are still many things on our wish list that it doesn't do.

SEE ALSO
pl-fb(1), pl-X(1), pl-pl(1), plot3(5).

AUTHORS
Phillip Dykstra
Paul R. Stay
Gary S. Moss

SOURCE
SECAD/VLD Computing Consortium, Bldg 394
The U. S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland 21005

BUG REPORTS
Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to <devs@brlcad.org>.