graphics support or plugin

[Georges]

Hi,

For some applications (fi motor reaction time) I need to plot the evolution of a variable over time. Is there a plugin or an external library or dll that could support graphics, plotting and charting in AMS ?

Georges

[Corey]

Sure, there's a few ways. What type of graph?

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[Georges]

Sure, there's a few ways. What type of graph?

I have an array of data points (integers between 100 en 1000) that should be plotted (points and eventually line graph) in time (time as horizontal X-axis). In total there are about 20-100 data points depending on the kind of test. We habe a test that takes 1 h and a test where a smaller number of trials are performes every 30 minutes during the day (in order to spot abnormal fluctuations in motor reaction times gfi with fatigue, medication effects etc). In the graph I would like to plot a colored line to mark the upper normal border of motor reaction time for that age decade. These values can very simply be kept in a preloaded or hard coded table Normal_Valuestbl.
One problem is that sometimes data points are clearly erronous (due to sudden technical problems, interference or patient factors) and one should be able to select them on the graph by point and click to eliminate or hide them in the dataset , table or SQLdatabase and replot the "filterd" set. That needs a certain interaction between screen coordinates and datapoints. I have routines to prevent this as much as possible by setting conditions on the data accespted to prevent abnormal "fast" reactions (anticipation) or abnormal late reaction times (fi > 2 secs) but it is impossible (even statistically by tagging outlyers) to eliminate al eventualities and artefacts. Therefore I need a way to let the usere interact with grafically plotted points. I thought of firing up exell in the background but should prefer in order to avoid all incompatibbilities a plugin or application specific graphic library. All suggestions are welcome.. Thanks



Sincerely,

Georges

[Corey]

OK, I see. Cool stuff. Well for this application you could do a variety of things but I think the best, most reliable, and definitely the most customizable is to use a Flash graphing component. There are tons of them out there for a variety of applications. Flash MX 2004 even comes with some by default. Someone posted a link to a realtime 3d graphing plug-in for Flash which was very attractive but a bit pricey. Anything which works with Flash will work perfectly within an AutoPlay Media Studio Project... In Flash MX 2004 you can also easily plot points BTW, you can also plot lines, shapes, curves, etc. But that's a bit tricky if you aren't used to it...

On the other hand, surely there's an excel plug-in for IE web browser? That would do the trick, and you could just serve your excel from within a web browser object, it will work perfectly...

One more possibilty you might like is the EXCEL-TO-FLASH software XCelcius. You can just convert your graph to .swf and then serve it as a Flash object. Here's a link to that:

http://www.infommersion.com/land/charts/charts.html

I'm sure there's some people around here with more Excel expertise than me who might have some better ideas on that... Hope that helps a bit. :)

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[Georges]

THANX. I already use Xcelsius wich by the way is really a fantastic piece of software to animate models made in excell. I use them in powerpoint presentations to interact with the audience in what-would-happen-if-we-would-change this or that variable kind of situations. Always stunning stuff !

Thanks for the tips.

georges

[Georges]

The search function on this forum has helped me find usefull links.

http://www.indigorose.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7806&highlight=flash+graphics

I will look into GlobFX

http://www.globfx.com/products/swfchart/samples.php

Nice library.

Thanks

Georges