User interface

Launching an X3D application puts two or three windows on the screen:

• The main canvas (Figure 1). This conforms to XView/OpenLook standards with a menubar above the canvas and message area below. The menubar contains system and graphics functions common to all applications including: quit, vplot, refresh, double buffer, fill, draw bounding box, draw axes and status.
• The 3-D control panel (Figure 2). 3-D functions include rotation, size, shift, lighting angle, and animation.
• An optional custom control window (not shown). This contains special controllers for a custom application.

An application recognizes the command line arguments:

        size=0.7        fraction of window size
        orient=25,25,0  initial x,y,z orientation in degrees
        box=no          draw bounding box
        axis=yes        draw axes
        fill=yes        fill surface patches
        buffer=yes      double buffer
        resolution=2    raster resolution
        out=default     hardcopy file

 

fig1
Figure 1 Three-dimensional controls.

 

canvas
Figure 2 X3D canvas.