The navigation panel provides options for controlling a number of the properties specific to three-dimensional charts. It does not appear for two-dimensional charts and it can be hidden for three-dimensional charts by toggling the → option.
Navigation Panel
There are six controls and five buttons in the Navigation panel. Starting from the left, the six controls are step size, light position for X, Y and Z axes, navigation, zoom, scale and navigation speed. The buttons on the right control wire frame/solid mode, on/off border drawing, on/off inline series (for columnar and bar charts with series), on/off Gouraud shading, and on/off animation.
- Step size:
This slide bar allows you to set the incremental amount used by the navigation control to rotate or move the 3D chart. The higher the position of the horizontal bar, the larger is the increment for each step.
- Light position for X, Y, and Z:
User-defined light position is useful to control the position of the light and therefore the direction from which it will shine on each axis.
- Navigation:
This control allows you to rotate or translate the chart. The center button is a toggle switch. When it is in a depressed state (denoted by the red color of the button), clicking on any of the four triangular buttons moves the chart in the direction indicated by that button. When the center button is in an elevated state, clicking on any of the four triangular buttons rotates the chart in the direction indicated by that button. The speed of navigation may be controlled by the Navigation Speed control.
- Zoom:
This control allows you to effectively move the chart closer to or farther away from the viewer. To operate, you point the mouse to the control and click on the left mouse button. Then, while holding down the button, you drag the mouse to the left or right. When you drag the mouse to the right, the red area is extended to the right, and the chart will appear to be closer to you (zoom in to blow up the chart). When you drag the mouse to the left, the red area will move to the left, and the chart will appear to move farther away from you (zoom out to shrink the chart).
- Scale:
This is a set of four slide bars. The first three bars allow you to change the scale factors for the X, Y, and Z axes respectively. The fourth bar determines the thickness of a three-dimensional column, bar, line, or pie (depending upon the chart type). The higher the position of the horizontal bar, the larger the value. For two-dimensional charts, you can adjust the bar width for bar, column, stack bar, stack column, high-low, and HLCO charts by selecting → .
- Animation speed:
This allows you to set the speed for chart navigation. This control is useful with the Navigation control and the Animation On/Off switch. It determines how fast the chart moves or rotates. To operate, click and drag the indicator needle to the desired position. Moving the indicator needle to the right will speed up the translation or rotation and moving the needle to the left will slow it down.
In addition, the five buttons do the following:
| Wire frame/ solid mode On/Off: This toggle switch allows you to view the three-dimensional chart as a wire frame when the switch is on or as a solid object when the switch is off. |
| Border Drawing On/Off: This toggle switch will draw a black outline on each edge of the chart when the switch is on. |
| Inline Series On/Off: This toggle switch will draw the series column in the same XY plane. This option is only available for columnar and bar charts with a data series and it does not appear on the navigation panel if the chart type is not applicable. |
| Gouraud Shading On/Off: Gouraud shading is a sophisticated and very realistic shading feature for three-dimensional charts. When the switch is on it will begin rendering the chart to shade each individual surface. |
| Animation On/Off: This toggle switch allows you to start/stop the animation of a three-dimensional chart. The speed of animation may be set using the Navigation Speed control. During animation, all panel controls except the animation speed control are disabled. |
