3D plotting in Excel

**mjronline** · 04-28-2009, 05:51 AM

Ok, just to get this out of the way. I have never used Excel before. I am completely ignorant at what to do with it, but I want to learn. Today as I was browsing the web, I came upon something that really caught my eye. http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/drupal/node/371

How in the world can excel be used to create something like that sphere? There are instructions at the bottom of the page that kinda looks like programming code of some kind, but I'm not sure what any of it means, or what to do with it, or how to customize it.

Is there anyone here that would be able to guide a first timer in creating something like that?

Thanks for any help you guys can provide.

**Andy Pope** · 04-28-2009, 06:17 AM

Excel does not do true 3d scatter plots.
You can fake it to some extent.

http://www.andypope.info/charts/3drotate.htm

Note Fernando's site is in Italian
http://www.prodomosua.eu/ppage02.html

**mjronline** · 04-28-2009, 06:26 AM

Originally Posted by Andy Pope

Excel does not do true 3d scatter plots.
You can fake it to some extent.

http://www.andypope.info/charts/3drotate.htm

Note Fernando's site is in Italian
http://www.prodomosua.eu/ppage02.html

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that it's impossible to create that sphere in excel?

**Andy Pope** · 04-28-2009, 06:29 AM

It's not impossible just not easy.

As excel does not deal with xyz you need to take the 3 values and recalculate for 2d. This will give the appearence of 3d.

**mjronline** · 04-28-2009, 06:35 AM

Is that the method that was used in the link I posted in the first post?

Couldn't I just paste that code or something into excel?

**Andy Pope** · 04-28-2009, 06:49 AM

It says RGL sample application

http://rgl.neoscientists.org/about.shtml

It is not Excel, although Excel may have been used to generate the random data set.