Manual

How to use the addon?

Based on user experience survey, the addon is quite easy to use. Even beginner users found it quite intuitive. But there are a lot of settings and customization features for the charts so it can be demanding or intimidating.

I suggest reading the README on the master branch before digging deeper into the addon. Accepted formats and basic usage is described there.

Preferences

Python dependencies

To create a surface chart, a technique named interpolation is used (to shape your scattered data into grid). It is provided by python module SciPy, which is not available by default in Blender Python. If you do not have dependencies installed already, there is a button which can do it for you. It is a best-effort approach if somebody has Blender compiled by themselves or uses custom python installation, successful installation is not guaranteed. Connection to the internet is needed. Tested on fresh Blender install on Windows 10 / Ubuntu 19.04.

Panel position

If you hate to have your sidebar clustered with all of the addons, you can move the panel wherever you want. Lookup possible positions (settings respectively named to Python names in the documentation) in Blender Python documentation.

Load data

Currently, the CSV format is supported. You can create multiple charts with loaded data.

• Press N to display sidebar and select DataVis tab
• Press "Load data" button to invoke modal window of your filesystem and select the desired CSV file
• If loaded successfully results of data analysis should be displayed. Important is the filename, so you are working with the right file, others are for information only.

Create a chart

With already loaded data you can use the "Add object" menu to choose a chart, that is available for your data. All data points are normalized into 1m cube. Different chart parts are parented, so you can manipulate with the chart by its container without selecting all the objects.

• Charts that cannot be created from data or if you have not loaded data are greyed out and cannot be created
• Select a chart of your choice, which invokes properties menu

Properties

Properties are divided into groups. Each provides customization to different chart component. All components are made in a way so you can manipulate with them afterwards even after addon execution. Axis, header, text and chart objects have different materials so you can choose the style. If the chart is available for both categorical and numerical data you can override the default settings, same with 3D or 2D, the decision is left upon you. Not every setting is available for every chart.

Chart header

• Create - enable or disable header
• Size - the size of the header
• Value - the actual text of the header

Legend

Data for the legend are taken from values and associated colour in the chart. Items in legend align themselves based on size.

• Create - enable or disable legend
• Item size - the size of the colour mark and text
• Position - right or left side of the chart

Axis

Settings that are relative to displayed data and to axis objects.

• Ranges are calculated from data automatically (Minimum and maximum from each column), but they are overridable. If you want to display multiple data series customizing ranges can help you.
• Create axis object - creates axis lines and tick labels.
• Steps - if the automatic-step setting is selected steps are calculated depending on the range of data step = range / 10 so 10 steps are generated automatically. You can customize step of each axis if you turn off automatic steps. For categorical data, step size changes how many labels are displayed.
• Z-axis position - change the position of the vertical axis so it does not interfere with your data
• Padding - space between chart and axis
• Thickness - how thick are axis lines
• Tick mark height - the height of tick marks

Ticks and label settings are not available without creating axis object.

Ticks

• Format - displayed format of numbers if axis displays numerical values
• Text size
• Decimal places

Labels

• Create - enable or disable labels
• From data - if the first line in your CSV is heading you can use those data for axis labels
• X/Y/Z Label - if you do not use labels from data, you can enter custom ones

Colors

• Use nodes - Use material with shader nodes or default one. If its possible addon automatically creates shader for the chart (so it does not need to create material for each object).
• Color type - Gradient - creates colour ramp in the shader that (customizable in shading tab) or different materials for each chart object based on its position. Z values are affecting data as default. Random - creates random colours for each data (can make your chart misleading, cause it doesn't handle multiple values of the same colour). Constant - one colour for every chart object.

Animation

If data has more than 3 dimensions, animation settings show up and it's possible to create keyframes between data timestamps.

• Animate - create animation keyframes
• Keyframe spacing - the distance between keyframes in animation

Specific chart properties

Some charts have settings that are specific. Bar and point chart you can choose the object which is going to be used to represent the data. The surface chart has grid size and interpolation type settings and so on. These settings are explained in Blender.

I hope you found what you were looking for, please submit an issue or write to me otherwise.