When a plot window is displaying multidimensional data, the dimension map icon will appear in the upper left corner of the plot window. Clicking on this icon will toggle display of the dimension map. The dimension map allows the user to display only chosen dimensions of the traces.
Consider the plot produced by
set value1 = temp
loop -50 125 25 dc vds 0.0 1.2 0.02 vgs 0.2 1.2 0.2
The loop command produces a three dimensional plot, with dimensions { 8, 6, 61 }. When plotting i(vds), the display would contain 48 traces, representing id vs. vds for each vgs and temperature value.
The visibility of these traces is set by the columns of clickable dimension selector indices shown in the dimension map. Initially, the traces for all dimensions are shown. Clicking anywhere in the dimension list with the center mouse button, or equivalently with the left (or only) mouse button while pressing Shift, will hide the traces for all dimensions. Clicking anywhere in the dimension list with the right mouse button, or equivalently with the left (or only) mouse button while pressing Ctrl, will show the traces for all dimensions. Clicking or dragging over the entries with the left mouse button will toggle display of the corresponding traces.
In the present case the dimension map contains two columns: the left column contains eight numbers 0-7, and the right columns contains six numbers 0-5. Clicking on these numbers controls the visibility per dimension, i.e., clicking in the left column would display/suppress all traces for a given temperature, clicking in the right column will display/suppress traces corresponding to a vgs value. Multiple entries in the same column can be toggled by dragging the mouse pointer over them.
This dimensional partitioning would apply for any number of dimensions. If a column contains too many dimensions to list completely, a label ``more'' will exist at the bottom of the listing. Clicking on this label will cycle through all of the dimensions, in the columns that require it.
If the plot is displaying a single multidimensional variable, then each least dimension is displayed in a separate color. The numbers in the rightmost column of the dimension map will use the same colors. In other columns, and in the rightmost column if more than one variable is being plotted, the indices use a uniform color to indicate that the dimension is shown, and in all cases black indicates a dimension that is not being shown.
The dimensions shown can also be controlled by mplot windows from the mplot command. These are the windows generally used to display results from operating range and Monte Carlo analysis. The mplot display consists of an array of pass/fail indication cells, one for each trial. These can be selected or deselected by clicking on them.
An mplot window is always associated with an internal plot structure, as listed with the Plots tool. The plot structure may also contain multidimensional vectors, for example if one uses the ``-k''" option to the check command, all trial data will be saved.
If an mplot window with selections is present, and the plot command is used to plot a multidimensional vector from the same internal plot structure as the mplot, then only the dimensions corresponding to the selected trials will be shown on the plot window.
In this plot window, a ``flat'' dimension map will be used. This is a single column, with length equal to the product of the ``real'' dimensions. The visibility of each flat dimension can be toggled with the map entries as usual. The mplot selections have no effect on a plot window once it is displayed, but will initialize new plot windows to 1) enforce a flat dimension mapping, and 2) set the initial states of the flat map. After changing the mplot selections, one must use the plot command again to see the revised dimensions, or alternatively one can note the numbers of the mplot cells, and manipulate the same numbers in the dimensions map of the first plot, to see the new data.
If one has a plot structure containing multidimensional vectors from any source, such as from the loop commnd, one can still use the mplot capability. Giving the command
mplot vector
for any multidimensional vector will produce an mplot window. The number of mplot cells will equal the number of flat dimensions in the vector. The pass/fail indication means nothing in this case, all cells display ``fail''. One can select the dimension cells in the mplot, which will affect subsequent plots from the plot command of any vector in the same internal plot structure, as described above. The vector given to the mplot command can be any vector from the plot, it is used for dimension counting only.
In older WRspice releases, the upper dimensions were represented as ``flat'', so that in the plot there would be a single column of numbers (0-47 in our original example above, six vgs values times eight temperatures), and clicking on these numbers would display/suppress the corresponding trace.