Overview of Visualizing Data
The IDL Workbench Visualize Perspective allows you to quickly create sophisticated visualizations without the need for IDL programming. For many common file types, simply opening a file creates new IDL variables. You can then drag the variables from the Variables view to a tool in the Tool Palette to automatically create a visualization.
The full power of the IDL language is always available, so you can customize the way visualizations are created. You can define your own actions to generate customized displays or automate the creation of complex visualizations.
The Visualize Perspective includes the Tool Palette, which displays data in the IDL iTools. Which iTool displays depends on the type of data. For example, image data appears in an iImage window. Vector data appears in an iVector window.
The iTools are a suite of visualization tools that share a common interface framework. The visualizations that you can create in iTools include all the types available in the Tool Palette: plot, image, surface, contour, map, volume, and vector. For more information, see What are iTools?
Drag and Drop Visualization Workflow
The basic workflow for the Visualize Perspective is the following:
- Open a data file in one of the following ways:
- In IDL, select File → Open File. (See the Plot With Overplot Example.)
Navigate to the location of the data you want to visualize, and click Open. - Double-click to open a data file in your project if the file is a supported type. (See Importing Data Using the iOpen Procedure and Types of Data You Can Import Using iOpen for more information.)
- From the Variables View, click and drag the variable(s) and drop them on the appropriate tool in the Tool Palette.
- An iTools window appears, displaying the data visualization.
The data variables display in the Variables View.
Visualize Perspective Elements
The Visualize Perspective adds two views to those included in the developer-focused IDL Perspective: the Tool Palette view and the Visualizations view.
Tool Palette View
The Tool Palette is a graphical interface that allows you to quickly visualize data variables. The Palette contains options for visualizing plot, image, surface, contour, map, vector, and volume, data. Simply drag a variable from the Variables view to create a visualization.
Figure 17-1: Tool Palette
For greater control over the visualization that is created, click the action toggle in the Tool Palette menu bar to display the actions associated with each tool. Drag variables from the Variables view to the variable fields in the actions and click the button to create the visualization. For more information, see Tool Palette Actions.
Variables View
This view is not new to the IDL Workbench, but it is shown in this perspective as an individual element (rather than as a tab in the Console area in the IDL Perspective). This view displays the variables that exist in the current IDL session. Drag variables from the Variables view to the Tool Palette to create visualizations.
Tip
Right-click on a variable to delete it from the Variables view and from IDL memory.
Visualizations View
When you first open the IDL Workbench, the Visualizations view displays links to the tutorial video and to the relevant online help topic:
Any time you create a visualization, this view changes to display thumbnail images of the current visualizations.
This view also allows you to control visualizations. To view a visualization, simply click on the thumbnail. The blue border around the thumbnail indicates the current iTool. Any overplot action will affect the current (selected) iTool. (See Plot With Overplot Example and Alternative Methods for Overplotting (Windows Only).)
To close a visualization, right-click on it and select Close.
To close all visualizations, click the double-x button in the upper right of the view.
Note
Custom actions that you create within tools can invoke any IDL procedure, and are not limited to iTool commands or visualizations. Only visualizations created using iTool procedures appear in the Visualizations view.
