DIAdem Idea Exchange

For non-waveform channels that have a certain channel property populated that specifies another valid channel to use for the X-axis, it would be great if users could simply drag and drop channels into a VIEW 2D Axis System WITHOUT having to also select the x-axis channel.

(Over) Simplified logic:

When dragging a channel from the Data Portal to a 2D Axis System:

IF 'Waveform' channel property == No AND IF 'Xaxis' channel property specifies another valid channel,

THEN use this other valid channel for the X-Axis of the channel being dragged.

Example 1:

Let's say we have an internal combustion engine for which we are recording several channels at a rate of one sample per engine cycle. As the engine speed goes up or down, there is less or more time between each sample. This means we can NOT use a waveform channel. We must have an associated time channel for these several recorded channels. In this time channel, we will record a timestamp value when each engine cycle occurs.

Example of 'Xaxis' channel property value:

"Time Channels\Time Stamp Engine Cycles"

Example 2:

Let's say we are recording channels at a known rate, such as 100 Hz. A waveform would normally work for this. However, in this example, there will be gaps of no data in these data channels. These gaps may be relatively long in duration and we therefore do NOT want to record NO VALUE during this time, which would bloat our data files. We also do NOT want to put this data in separate data file nor in separate groups. This situation happens in MANY scenarios for us. For this, we must have an associated time channel for each of the data rates, such as "Time Stamp 1 Hz", "Time Stamp 10 Hz", "Time Stamp 50 Hz", and "Time Stamp 1000 Hz".

For both of these examples, plotting such non-waveform channels in a 2D Axis System could take less work on the end users' part, if we could add a little smarts to this drag-n-drop plotting operation. Implementing something like this will make creation of plots with meaningful x-axis values for non-waveform channels as easy as plot creation for waveform channels.

In some advanced Data Visualization products, once you've created your views, you can filter out what is shown by selecting one of the channels and assigning filtering on that Channel. So suppose, I Chart A and B vs. C. I can then tell the chart to only show me data points where A is between 5 and 10. OR, even better, some allow you to show only A data points where D is between two values. OR, even better, if E is a category like "fruit" I can ask it to show me only the values of A that correspond with fruit channel E being "orange".

Excel accomplishes this by using the Autofilter on your data. Of course, it becomes global for all the charts that refer to that data at that moment in time, but at least it can be done quite simply.

The only two acceptable ways known to do this in Diadem are both tedious to set up and laborous to repeat.

1) Write what is probably a complex script to import the data in the first place. Every time parameters for the filtering change, the data must be re-imported. UGH!

2) Write a script to copy the data from main group to a sub group and the script performs the filter. Again, every time parameters for the filtering change, re-run the script. Nevermind the enormous coding time to create a flexible enough script.

I realize the end-user is probably different, but Tableau does an excellent job with visualization, and does this feature seamlessly.