SAS/SPECTRAVIEW Software User's Guide

Introduction

Once you have loaded and perhaps color coded your data, it is time to explore and visualize the data. SAS/SPECTRAVIEW provides several interactive visualization techniques to search through your loaded data and display an image. The techniques include:

point cloud: to display response values as colored markers, showing individual data points.
cutting planes: to produce slices of data, either perpendicular to an axis or not perpendicular to any axis. In addition to the axis cutting planes, you can request two- and three-dimensional surface views (surfaces, charts, stacks, and plots) at a specific cutting plane's location.
isosurface: to produce a three-dimensional surface by connecting all the data points with one response value.
solid-volume image: to produce a colored, three-dimensional solid-block image of the data points, providing an overall view of the data at the volume's border.
direct volume rendering: to create a two-dimensional image of the entire volume of data points with transparency.
BY variable processing: to animate an image so that you can see how response values change according to some grouping, like over time.

To decide which technique to use, consider the type of data. For example, to hold one axis value constant and examine the effect of the other two axis values on the response value, use a cutting plane. To view a subset of data based on response values, use a point cloud.

Note: You can combine multiple images, for example, you can display a point cloud, then a cutting plane. However, if the affect of multiple images is not what you want, be sure to turn off a technique before you request another. [cautionend]

Color Coding Response Values

When you request a visualization technique, the software displays the response values using the colors from the current data ramp. You can customize the response value ranges and mapped colors as explained in Setting Response Value Colors for Images.

Image Customizations

To enhance the visualization of data, the global buttons provide such options as image annotations, image transformations, and response value probing. For information, see Customizing an Image.

Saving an Image

SAS/SPECTRAVIEW allows you to save a displayed image to either a TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) file or a PostScript file, for example, to use in presentations. You can also save current data values to a new SAS data set, for example, to use the new data set with other SAS System products. For information, see Saving a Displayed Image.

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