too many clicks to show XY line plot from CSV data
This issue was created automatically from an original Mantis Issue. Further discussion may take place here.
It is currently too many steps/clicks to get a XY line plot from CSV data.
Note: I was running from a build of the ParaView-3-0 branch from CVS.
This was the sequence of steps to get a simple line plot display from as CSV data file, shown at the end of this Description--
- Open/Accept CSV data file
- Close the bar chart window (I want XY line plot)
- Click on Object Inspector Display tab
- Click View Visible check box
- Change Attribute Mode pull-down from "Point Data" to "Cell Data"
- Click off X Axis Use Y Array Index (I want one of the arrays in the data file to specify the Y axis values)
- Click off the 'Time' Variable in the Y Axis panel (I don't want to see a plot of Time)
Step 1 is needed, but the rest of the steps could be automated, based upon formulation of the input data, and/or a simple initialization setting -- for example to decide between bar chart and line plot if there is only one curve in the file. Multiple columns in CSV file could (always?) imply line plots.
Another suggestion-- add a "format" string to the choice of strings already being interpreted in the header. It looks like vtkCSVReader class already knows about "::Point", "::PointData", and "::CellData". What about adding something like "::linePlot", or "::Y-Axis" or something?
If the reader detects "::linePlot" in a column, it uses that column as the Y-axis, assumes the columns are all cell data, displays a lineplot, turns on Attribute mode as cell data, and turns off display of that variable in XY plot window.
CSV sample data: Time,V(FET_BIAS),V(RF_PWR5_TX),V(DA_VIDEO_DIG) 0.00E+00,0,0.5,-2 1.50E-11,0,0.5,-2.2 4.50E-11,0,0.7,-2.4 1.05E-10,1,0.7,-2.6