Discover how to move, format and position 3-D graphs
Do you like 3-D graphs?
By keeping in mind the advice received by our Information Design
expert, Luigi Canali De Rossi, about the best use of 2-D on 3-D
charts,(see previous issue, art. 5),
you can go a long way to customize the way
your 3-D charts will appear.
Once you have created your chart, and applied any of the 3-D types
(note: one of the best uses for 3-D charts is definitely the pie chart)
you can click on "Chart" (on the Menu toolbar) and then click on
"3-D View..."
Within the dialog box that appears, you can modify your 3-D chart as
follows:
- Change the elevation (by repeatedly clicking on the up and down
arrows or by selecting manually the value in the "Elevation:"
box).
- Modify the rotation (by clicking on the icons or by manually
selecting the value in the "Rotation:" box).
*If you set the O (zero) value for both rotation and elevation, your
chart will no longer have a 3-D effect!*
- increase or decrease the height of the base (in case you have a pie
chart) by typing in the value in the "Height:" box.
If you have a bar or column chart, you will have also another 2 check
boxes:
- one for the "Autoscaling" (you can turn it on or off)
- the other one for the "Right angle axes". If you deselect this
one, you will see an additional feature you can apply: you can customize
the perspective, by either typing in the right value in the
"Perspective:" box or by clicking in the up and down arrows on
top of the perspective box.
The whole dialog box for changing the appearance of a 3-D chart is
quite intuitive, and you just need to make a few attempts in order to find
the right values to apply to your chart. Remember that if you press "Apply"
you will have a preview of the result on the chart itself, and if you
don't like this result you can still modify it. Once you click "OK",
the chart will be modified and the box will disappear.
You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.
