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## Setting an input variable's role

Each of the Scatter plot's input variables has a role that you can set which determines how the input variable is used by the Scatter plot. An input variable can be used for the X, Y, Z coordinates, for the color, or it can have no role. The role of the input variable is not fixed because you might want to change roles many times and it is much less work to change only the roles instead of reselecting variables, limits, and scaling for an input variable. The flexibility of selecting a role for an input variable makes it convenient to turn off colors or the Z coordinate with little effort. To change the role for an input variable, select a new role from the input variable's Role combo box. If you select a role that is already played by another input variable, VisIt will give the current input variable the selected role and set the input variable that previously had the selected role so that it has no role.

Each of the Scatter plot roles and their associated input variables are listed in the bottom of the Scatter plot attributes window. Roles that have an input variable have the name of the input variable printed next to the name of the role so looking through all of the input variable tabs to determine what the Scatter plot should look like is not required. Roles that have no assigned input variable are grayed out.