3d table software

September 25, 2008 12:13 PM

I'm looking for free software that allows me to put data in an 3-dimensional table/grid, and then lets me view it.

I need something that helps me visualize data in 3 dimensions. I'm essentially looking for something like excel but in 3D, though not as sophisticated.

For example, cell [0,0,0] may contain some numbers, [0,1,2] may contain something else, and I want to view all of this in some kind of rotatable cube.

Is there anything like that out there, or am I out of luck?

If it helps, I run XP.

posted by alligatorman to computers & internet (2 comments total)

The problem with visualising 3D data is: how do you see the data in a cell in the middle of the cube if there is data in the cells surrounding it? Obviously there are various ways of doing it (slices, transparency, x/y/time, 'point clouds'), but none are really ideal.

Most of my 3D plotting ends up being in MATLAB, but that's far from free. You could investigate the free MATLAB clone GNU Octave.

Or if it only needs to be done once you could send me the data and I could have a go at plotting it for you.
posted by Mike1024 at 12:37 PM on September 25, 2008

I don't know if i'm getting what you want to do, but gnuplot and qtiplot are two free¹ options for data visualization available on XP. Both are quite powerfull, if not very user friendly. Qtiplot will probably be easier to figure out than gnuplot if you haven't used it before.

¹Note that qtiplot has sources available for free, but you have to pay for a ready-made binary.
posted by ghost of a past number at 11:36 PM on September 25, 2008