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Using the iSurface Tool

The IDL iSurface tool provides interactive access to surface data. You can visualize surfaces and then modify and manipulate those surfaces in a single interactive environment.

Displaying a Surface

To import a file containing surface data into the iSurface tool:

  1. Follow the steps in Accessing Binary Surface Data for instructions on how to read in the binary marbells.dat file, located in the examples\data directory of your IDL installation.

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  2. After entering all steps to read in your binary template, at the IDL Command Line, type: iSurface, MARBELLS_BINARY.MARBELLS. This displays the surface data.

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    Figure 7-1: Maroon Bells Binary Data Visualized in the iSurface Tool

    Figure 7-1: Maroon Bells Binary Data Visualized in the iSurface Tool

Modifying Surfaces

The iSurface tool allows you many options for manipulating and modifying surfaces. For example, rotation tools are provided in the iSurface tool to make it easier to see all aspects of a 3-D surface visualization. Surfaces can be rotated freely or along an axis with the mouse, and they can be rotated in fixed or arbitrary increments from the Operations menu.

To rotate a surface freely or along an axis with the mouse:

  1. Select the surface in the iSurface window.

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  2. Click Rotate on the Manipulator toolbar. The rotation sphere is displayed around the surface.
    • To rotate the surface freely, position the mouse pointer over the surface so that it changes to a free rotation pointer . Click and drag to rotate the surface in the desired direction.

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    • To rotate the surface along an axis, position the mouse pointer over an axis so that it changes to an axis rotation pointer . Click and drag to rotate the surface along the axis in the desired direction.

To rotate a surface in 90° increments left or right from the Operations menu:

  1. Select the surface in the iTool window.

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  2. Select Operations Rotate Rotate Left or Operations Rotate Rotate Right.

To rotate a surface an arbitrary number of degrees from the Operations menu:

  1. Select the surface in the iTool window.

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  2. Select Operations Rotate Rotate by Angle.

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  3. In the Rotate Angle dialog, enter the desired number of degrees to rotate the surface.

Other options are available in iSurface such as manipulating surface color, texture mapping, and annotating among other things. For much more information on working with the iSurface tool, see Working with Surfaces.

  IDL Online Help (March 06, 2007)