50 What Every Engineer Should Know About Excel

FIGURE 3.21

FIGURE 3.22

3.19 Chart Format and Cosmetics

Most charts prepared for engineering purposes will have a simple format involving mini-
mal artistic or cosmetic effects. For visual presentations, color is certainly used to advan-
tage. Excel offers the opportunity to adjust chart lls, fonts, colors, line size, and other
effects.
Charts and Graphs 51

FIGURE 3.23

The purpose of this section is to illustrate the format windows that may be called up to
make adjustments in various chart layouts and appearance. Figure 3.24 shows a very simple
type 4 (Section 3.3) scatter chart. The main elements of the chart layouts that may be varied
are Chart Area, Plot Area, Either Axis, Data Series, Title, and Gridlines. The format process is
initiated by double-clicking one of these elements and thereby calling up the format window
as shown in Figure 3.25. Note that the Chart Options drop-down menu has been selected
to show all the chart elements that are editable through this window. For the Chart Area
selection, there are Chart Options and there are Text Options that can be edited. For Chart
Options, there are options for Fill & Line ( ), Effects ( ), and Size & Properties ( ). Clicking
on each of these respective icons will present all the options from which to choose. The reader
is encouraged to select each option area and become familiar with all available options.
52 What Every Engineer Should Know About Excel

FIGURE 3.24

FIGURE 3.25
Charts and Graphs 53

1.200000
1.000000
0.800000
0.600000
0.400000
0.200000
J(x,4)
0.000000
J(x,2)
–0.200000 0 1 1 2 2 3 4 4
5 5 6 7
7 8 8 9
–0.400000 10 10 11 11 J(x,0)
12 13 13 14
–0.600000 14 15 16

–0.600000–0.400000 –0.400000–0.200000 –0.200000–0.000000

0.000000–0.200000 0.200000–0.400000 0.400000–0.600000
0.600000–0.800000 0.800000–1.000000 1.000000–1.200000

FIGURE 3.26

3.20 Surface Charts

Surface charts of the wire mesh or color variation type may be plotted by selecting a
Surface Chart from the INSERT/CHARTS/Insert Surface or Radar Chart menu option.
The adjustment of the chart depth is problematic, but may be accomplished using the fol-
lowing procedure:

1. Select (activate) the data.

2. On the Chart Wizard, choose Area Chart, 3-D effect.
3. Double click a chart element to bring up the Format window. On the Chart Options
drop-down menu, select Side Wall and click on the Effects Icon. Scroll down and
expand the 3-D Rotation options and increase the value of the Depth (% of base)
from 100 to 520.
4. Change the chart type to Surface and resize the chart for better viewing.

Figure 3.26 shows the result of this procedure applied to the Bessel functions described in
Section 3.13.

3.21 An Exercise in 3-D Visualization

This example gives the reader an opportunity to exercise his or her space visualization
capabilities. Consider the set of 3-D views of the object shown in Figure 3.13.
Figure 3.27 displays the object in Figure 3.13e at several different elevation and rotation
parameters. Before going further, the reader may want to examine each of these views and
try to visualize their relative positions.
54 What Every Engineer Should Know About Excel

FIGURE 3.27

When considering the rotation of 3-D charts, note that certain angles represent certain views.
Note that a rotation angle of 0° or 360° represents a view head-on or straight into the page.
An elevation angle of 0° represents the same viewing position. An elevation angle of +90°
represents a view straight down on the top of the object, whereas an elevation angle of −90°
represents a view straight into the bottom of the object. The display of the views presented in
Figure 3.27 notes the designations of their corresponding rotation and elevation angles.
Visualizing the different object positions of Figure 3.27 without the elevation and rota-
tion information is not an easy task and represents some dif culty for most readers. This
example illustrates once again the incredible display capabilities of Excel and the ease with
which they can be accomplished.

Problems
3.1 The following data are collected in a certain experiment:

x y
24,461 71.9
28,257 90.3
49,912 126.9
63,900 149.1
70,557 162
79,356 169
95,091 204
102,095 214
107,346 199.4
108,480 202.6