Controls

The view of a plot is controlled by three components:

  1. The axis range, which defines the coordinate system for the plotted points. It consists of two or three intervals, depending on whether the plot is 2D or 3D.
  2. 3D plots have camera settings for zoom and rotation. Zoom defines the distance from viewer to center of the axis. At a zoom of 100% the unrotated XZ axis range fills the screen width exactly. Rotation is defined by three angles (internally we use unit quaternions but this variation of Euler angles is more intuitive):
  3. The preimage range. For graph style plots and vector fields this is locked to the axis range, but for parametric plots it is independent of the axis range. For S¹ and S¹ × S¹ this is always [0,2π) and [0,2π) × [0,2π).

To set all of these precisely there are text fields in the "Axis" box in the inspector pane on the right of the plot window. Caveat: If you change their value to a precise value (say input range to π), hitting enter will set the right value, but unfocusing the textfield sets the value again, this time to the currently displayed rounded value (3.14 or such). Skip hitting enter in that case.

Graphically they can be changed via mouse, trackpad, keyboard or Space Navigator (a 3D mouse). The different gestures for each device are listed below.

2D plots

Apart from the preimage controls there are only the two axis intervals, defined by their center and size:

Axis RangeAxis Center
Mousescroll wheel
⇧ + vertical drag
left click & drag
Trackpadpinching
⇧ + vertical scroll
scrolling
Keyboard⇧ + ↑/↓
+/- keys
←↑↓→
Space
Navigator
push in Y directionpush in X and Z directions

Camera for 3D Plots

There are two types of zooming, both mostly using the Shift key:

  1. Changing the distance between camera and axis center. Done mostly by up/down motions.
  2. Scaling the axis range. Done mostly by left/right motions (see next section).
ZoomRotation
Mousescroll wheel
⇧ + vertical drag
left click & drag
Trackpadpinching
⇧ + vertical scrolling
scrolling
rotation gesture for θ
Keyboard⇧ + ↑/↓
+/- keys
←↑↓→
Space
Navigator
push in Z directionrotate

Axis Range and Center for 3D Plots

Axis RangeAxis Center
Mouse⇧ + scroll wheel
⇧ + horizontal drag
⌘ + drag
right button drag
Trackpad⌘ + pinching
⇧ + horizontal scrolling
⌘ + scrolling
Keyboard⇧ + ←/→⌘ + ←↑↓→
Space
Navigator
⇧ + push in Z directionpush in X and Y directions

Preimage Range and Center

This has an effect only for image modes and parametric plots on ℝ and ℝ² (parametrics on S¹ and S¹ × S¹ always use the full range).

RangeCenter
Mouse⌥ + scroll wheel
⌥ + ⇧ + left drag
wheel button drag
⌥ + left drag
Trackpad⌥ + pinch
⌥ + ⇧ + scroll
⌥ + scroll
Keyboard⌥ + ⇧ + ↑↓
⌥ + ⇧ + ←→
⌥ + ←↑↓→
Space
Navigator
⌥ + Z direction⌥ + X and Y directions

Other Hotkeys

The ones without the -modifier will only work when the keyboard focus is on the graph view (see ⌘G).