MDchanic

Shot in the dark -

Does anyone out there know of a good (and preferably free or cheap) program that will plot three axes of numeric data and treat all of the data as numbers, and not as text?

I thought this would be a no-brainer to find, but it seems that all of the commonly available utilities (like the ones in Office and OSX) will only give you a "symbolic" z-axis, not a numeric one, or will only plot equations, but not data sets.

I have found one or two programs that might do this IF I turned my data points representing the start and end points of lines into all-encompassing fine-grained sets of coördinates, and then created a new "slice" of the graph (and full set of coördinates) for each increment of the z-axis (which would really **** me off).

Simply speaking, I want to represent timing advance as a 3D map (just for fun, really), with degrees of advance on the y-axis, inches of vacuum on the x-axis, and RPM on the z-axis. Effectively, one face of the graph would represent the centrifugal advance, one face would represent the vacuum advance, and all the other volume of the graph would represent the sum of the two under the various possible combinations.

If anyone knows of such a thing, or if anyone has access to one and feels like inputting less than 200 discrete data points (which I can supply as a spreadsheet, obviously), please let me know.

Thanks,

- Eric

oldcutlass

I did a quick search of interpolation of xyz motion or surface algorithms and came up with a few free programs that use excel data sheets. Also look at accelerometer programs. I have a backround in real time flight simulation, but it's been about 30 years.

Good luck!

MDchanic

Thanks. You essentially confirm my finding that there's nothing that would make the process something less than a project (and I don't need another one of those ).

I think I'm not in the mood for finding, getting, and figuring out an interpolation program to create a coördinate set to import into a 3D grapher to make a pretty picture.

It's just such an obvious item that it's weird that there aren't a ton of them out there.

- Eric

frankr442

Huh??

And I went to college - jeez.

m371961

Eric, you have too much free time .

MDchanic

If I had too much free time, I'd sit down and plot the value of every point in a 216,000 point volume array to make the stupid low-grade software happy, but I won't.

- Eric

oldcutlass

So outside of the voices in your head compelling you to do this, what were you hoping to achieve.

MDchanic

Just trying to get a better feel for the way that the different forces of timing come together.
I get things better when I can see them.

I've checked the curves of various diaphragms and springs, and I've made 2D graphs, which help, but I'd like to really put it all together now that I've got the data.

Oh, and I've been setting up the timing of a new motor with a new cam - I think I've got it, but I'd like to really see where I'm at and where I've been.

- Eric

Yellowstatue

Well, there's always NASA...

MDchanic

Fine point.

I'll bet they graph stuff like this all the time in their quest for Uranus.

- Eric

Rocket Richard

You could try modelling it in 3D software like Solid Edge.
Maybe this link will give you some ideas: https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/50974

Rich

...Forgot to mention that you may be able to find a free trial version of whichever 3D software you want to use.

MDchanic

I'd love to own SolidWorks, but I think a functional version might be just a bit pricey for me.

Thanks, though!

- Eric

Rocket Richard

Here's a free 45 day trial of a full version of Solid Edge. They say here that there are no restrictions, full on. Not bad if you have a quick one-off project to do.

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.co...lid-edge.shtml

MDchanic

Wow. That's pretty high-end stuff.

I'll have to check it out, but I can see that it may take all of those 45 days to master it.

Thanks.

- Eric

Rocket Richard

Check this out.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/ex...001117939.aspx

i don't know why I didn't think of this earlier.
If you have microsoft excel you can do it relatively easily. I haven't tried myself, but i've done lots of 2D charts. Probably not a huge leap to go to 3D.

Let me know if you need a hand. I'm interested in this stuff.

-Rich

MDchanic

Hmmmm... When I tried that, it would only allow me to use non-numeric values for the z-axis (it was like the z-axis was the names of the bars on a bar graph), but I'll try doing just what they say and see if it will do it for me. It does look like it should, judging by that write-up.

Thanks.

- Eric

MDchanic

After a closer look, that won't work either. It would require me to calculate every value for every combination of vacuum and centrifugal advance manually, and make a huge table of those values, which is what I'm trying to avoid.

Thanks anyway, though.

- Eric

oldcutlass

This will only work for your engine. The variables on vacuum vs vacuum advance and what vacuum canistor play a major part I would assume. I think thats why most charts on advance curves are 2d.

MDchanic

That's the only engine I care about.

But, see, if you could illustrate your timing curves on a 3D graph, you could actually see where it may be too high or low, and you could substitute data from other parts, such as from different advance cans or springs, and see what effect it would have.

It would just be a neat tool. The computer-managed guys can do this with their timing, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to as well.

- Eric