What's New in SAS Software

SAS/INSIGHT Software

Output

To view or modify output options associated with your rotating plot, click on the Output button of the rotating plot variables dialog. The only change to this dialog box is the addition of the Fit Surface checkbox. When selected, this option causes SAS/INSIGHT software to fit a surface to the data in the rotating plot.

You can modify aspects of the rotating plot by using the rotating plot pop-up menu. Click the menu button at the lower left corner of the plot to display the pop-up menu.

The following items are specific for the surface plot.

Axes: Three Sections: positions three sectional axes outside the surface drawing area, with ticks. This is the best position for viewing a surface.
Color Blending: applies color blending to all contour levels. The color blends in the tool window is used. The surface is colored by those colors when Block Color or Smooth Color display modes are on.
Drawing Modes: Fast Draw: toggles the use of drawing algorithms that may be faster, depending on your host. The effect of these algorithms also depends on the size of your data set. On some hosts, this menu improves rotation speed for large data sets.
Drawing Modes:Hidden Line Removal: draws the surface in wireframe with hidden line removal. The front and back faces are in two different colors.
Drawing Modes: Block Color: fills each surface grid cell with a color block by using color interpolation at the grid cell level.
Drawing Modes: Smooth Color: fills the surface by using smooth color interpolation at the screen pixel level.

Note: In color drawing modes, a color legend bar is drawn along the Z axis in 3D space if no ZColor variable specified. Otherwise, a 2D color bar is drawn at the right side of the plot for the ZColor variable.

Note: You can change the default color blends using up to five colors. To do this, follow these steps:

Bring up the tools window by using Edit:Window:Tool.
Choose a color in the tools window and place the cursor on the color button.
Hold down the shift key and then drag the color down to the large multiple colors button.
The multiple colors button is evenly divided into four sections which are separated by five colors. Position cursor near one of the five colors and release the mouse button to change the color. The colors in the button sections ended with the new color change to new smooth blends accordingly.

With large data sets, rotation speed can be slow. The most reliable ways to optimize rotation speed are as follows:

Use only square observation markers.
Use only one color for observations.
Use a small marker size, 1 if possible.
Use fast draw or Hidden Line Removal drawing modes for surface.

When modeling with two explanatory variables, you may want to display a fitted plane in the rotating plot. You can write SAS statements to add planes and surfaces to the data set and rotate them with the original data. Muenchen (1992) has developed and documented a flexible set of SAS statements for this purpose.

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