2D/3D Effects are attached to each charting area. By default each charting area is displayed in 2D mode. You can switch each charting area individually between 2D and 3D mode from the 2D/3D Effects page. The 2D/3D Effects page has the following settings:
Orientation - defines the orientation of the chart area. Possible values are:
Upward - the chart is oriented vertically, with its Y dimension pointing upward (default).
Left To Right - the chart is oriented horizontally, with its Y dimension pointing towards the right.
Right To Left - the chart is oriented horizontally, with its Y dimension pointing towards the left.
The orientation setting is used, when you want to create horizontal charts in 2D. See
Horizontal Charts for more info.
Aspect Mode - defines how the chart will fill the available area specified by the currently applied chart layout. Possible values are:
Stretch - the chart will stretch the x and y dimensions to fill the whole chart area.
Fit Plot - the chart will stretch the x or y dimension so that the plot area maintains the aspect specified by Aspect X and Aspect Y properties.
Fit Content Area - the chart will stretch the x or y dimension so that the content area maintains the aspect specified by Aspect X and Aspect Y properties.
Min Dock Zone Margins - controls the minimum area occupied the left, top, right and bottom axis zones. Set to Automatic by default.
Max Dock Zone Margins - controls the maximum area occupied the left, top, right and bottom axis zones. Set to Automatic by default.
Light Model - lets you choose a predefined lights configuration, which is used to lit the chart scene.
Camera Position group- the properties in this group define the position of the camera. In 3D charting you may think of the chart as a real world object, which you view by positioning a camera on an imaginary sphere, large enough to contain the chart.
Each point on this sphere can be defined with two angles - one which measures the point rotation in XZ plane and another one, which measures the point elevation in YZ plane. These two angles are controlled by the Rotation and Elevation properties respectively.
The camera can also be rotated relatively to the sphere point defined by the [Rotation:Elevation] pair - this is controlled by the Viewer Rotation property.
Projection Settings group - when the camera is positioned, the chart is projected to an imaginary 2D surface perpendicular to the point on the imaginary sphere.
The way in which the depth (i.e. distance from the camera) affects the projection of each point of the chart onto this surface is controlled by the Projection Type setting, which accepts the following values:
Perspective - points with larger depth will appear closer to each other. How closer exactly is controlled by the Perspective Angle property. The larger the perspective angle the closer deeper points are. If Perspective Angle is set to 0 the depth does not affect the projection (which is the simplest case of Orthogonal Projection).
Orthogonal - the depth will not affect the distance between the projected points. In the case of orthogonal projection however you can instruct the chart to apply X and Y offset, which is proportional to the point depth. This is especially useful if you want to display 2D Half like charts - just set Rotation, Elevation and Viewer Rotation to zero and then play with the X Depth Offset and Y Depth Offset of the Orthogonal Projection.
Dimensions group - in the case of 3D charting each charting cube is defined by the sizes specified by the Width, Height and Depth settings. This is a major difference in comparison to 2D charting where charts are auto fitted in the box allocated for the chart area.
