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Graphic Design Formats

Added 30 Jul 2008

Consider a materials science problem of finding the area of the highest density of electrical charges within a three-dimensional (3D) volume. One way to simplify the process of looking into a volume is to break the problem down into a series of two-dimensional (2D) slices running along one of the axes of the volume. Each slice of the volume shows the charge density as a color contour map within that slice. The original volume can be represented by an outline of a rectangular box. The series of images generated by visualizing a perspective view of this box with each of the slices correctly oriented within the box produces an animation.

Another method of visualizing data in three dimensions is to generate isosurfaces. An isosurface is a surface generated by connecting all data in the volume that have the same value. In groundwater contamination modeling, a 3D volume of concentrations can be simplified by generating isosurfaces of different contaminant concentrations.