Use a Ray () plot to visualize the value of a ray variable versus time for all rays, or to plot two ray variables against each other at a set of time steps. The Ray plot must point to a Ray (Dataset). Add a Color Expression subnode to color the resulting lines, or add a Filter subnode to plot the properties of only a subset of rays in dataset as needed. For the settings in the Filter subnode, see Filter for Ray and Ray Trajectories. To add this plot type, right-click a 1D Plot Group node and choose Ray from the More Plots menu.

In the y-Axis Data section, you can define an expression, which may be dependent on both particle and field variables.

Select a Parameter: Solution number or Expression.

For Solution number, a distinct line is plotted for every ray, with the y-axis being the user-defined expression from the y-Axis data section and the x-axis being time. The total number of lines equals the total number of rays (after taking the Filter subnode and the selection of the Ray (Dataset), if any, into account) multiplied by the total number of selected outer solutions if applicable.

For Expression, the expressions entered in the y-Axis Data and x-Axis Data sections are plotted against each other for all rays at each specified time — that is, the total number of lines equals the total number of selected times multiplied by the total number of selected outer solutions.

Select the Show legends check box to display the plotted expressions to the right of the plot. In plots where each line represents a certain time value, eigenvalue, or parameter value, these values are also displayed.

When Automatic is selected from the Legends list (the default), the legend texts appear automatically. If Manual is selected from the Legends list, enter your own legend text into the table. If Evaluated is selected, you can use the eval function to create an evaluated legend text in the Legend field that include evaluated global expressions such as global parameters used in sweeps. For the numerical evaluation, you can control the precision in the Precision field (default: 3).

Choose an Operation: Sum (the default), None, Average, Maximum, Minimum, RMS, Standard deviation, or Variance. The operation is applied to the rays only if the x-axis is Time. If None is selected, a distinct line is plotted for each ray; otherwise, the selected data series operation is used to compute a single data point for all rays at each time step. The default setting prevents an extremely large number of lines from being plotted when a new Ray plot is created.