Contour (Plot)
Use a Contour plot to visualize a scalar quantity as a contour in 2D () or 3D () and display the quantity as a set of colored lines. You can also use filled contours to create a kind of a surface plot with color banding. The selected quantity has a constant value on these contour lines, optionally with a 3D height for 2D contours. Add Color Expression, Deformation, Filter, Material Appearance, Selection (Plot Attribute), Translation, Height Expression (2D only), or Transparency (3D and 2D with Height Expression) subnodes as needed. Right-click a 2D Plot Group or 3D Plot Group to add these plots.
Go to Common Results Node Settings for links to information about these sections: Data, Expression, Title, Levels, Quality, Inherit Style, and, except for some details below, Coloring and Style.
Coloring and Style
Select a Contour type: Line (the default), Filled, or Tube. Using filled contours creates a plot with color banding rather than isolated contour lines or tubes when using the other contour types.
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If Line is selected, you can also select the Level labels check box to display line labels on the graph.
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If Filled is selected, you can also clear the Fill surfaces outside of contour levels check box (selected by default) to not fill the areas of the geometry’s surface that are above the highest and below the lowest contour.
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If Tube is selected, you can enter an expression that defines the radius in the Tube radius expression field (default: 1). Click the Replace Expression button () to choose a predefined expression to use for the tube radius. Click the Radius scale factor check box to change the default radius scale factor if you want to make the tubes thicker or thinner.
If you select to display level labels (not available for filled contours), select the Level labels check box and specify the precision (number of significant digits) as a positive integer in the Precision field (default: 4). You can also choose a color for the labels from the Label color list: Choose From theme to use the color from the color theme, choose Custom to define a custom color, or choose any of the predefined colors.
For coloring the contours, select one of the following options from the Coloring list:
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Select Color table (the default) to color the contours using a color table that you choose from the Color table list below.
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Select Uniform to use a predefined uniform color, or select Custom to define a custom color from the colored list below (on Windows) or by clicking the Color button (on Linux and macOS) and then selecting a color from the color palette.
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Select Gradient to specify the coloring as a gradient between two colors, which you specify using the Top color and Bottom color lists.
The Color legend check box is selected by default. Clear it to remove the color legend. Select the Reverse color table or Reverse color gradient and Symmetrize color range check boxes as required.
For information about the Legend type list, see Legend Type.