View options for Signals#

../../_images/s_view.png — Screenshot of the “View” menu.#

When the “Signal Panel” is selected, the menus and toolbars are updated to provide signal-related actions.

The “View” menu allows you to visualize the current signal or group of signals. It also allows you to show/hide titles, to enable/disable anti-aliasing, or to refresh the visualization.

View in a new window#

Open a new window to visualize the selected signals.

This option allows you to visualize the selected signals in a separate window, in which you can visualize the data more comfortably (e.g., by maximizing the window) and you can also annotate the data.

When you click on the button “Annotations” in the toolbar of the new window, the annotation editing mode is activated (see the section “Edit annotations” below).

Edit annotations#

Open a new window to edit annotations.

This option allows you to show the selected signals in a separate window, in which you can visualize the data more comfortably (e.g., by maximizing the window) as well as to add or edit annotations.

Annotations are used to add comments or labels to the data, and they can be used to highlight specific events or regions of interest.

Note

The annotations are saved in the metadata of the signal, so they are persistent and will be displayed every time you visualize the signal.

../../_images/signal_annotations1.png — Annotations may be added in the separate view.#

The typical workflow to edit annotations is as follows:

Select the “Edit annotations” option.
In the new window, add annotations by clicking on the corresponding buttons at the bottom of the window.
Eventually, customize the annotations by changing their properties (e.g., the text, the color, the position, etc.) using the “Parameters” option in the context menu of the annotations.
When you are done, click on the “OK” button to save the annotations. This will close the window and the annotations will be saved in the metadata of the signal and will be displayed in the main window.

../../_images/signal_annotations2.png — Annotations are now part of the signal metadata.#

Note

Annotations may be copied from a signal to another by using the “copy/paste metadata” features.

Auto-refresh#

Automatically refresh the visualization when the data changes:

When enabled (default), the plot view is automatically refreshed when the data changes.
When disabled, the plot view is not refreshed until you manually refresh it by using the “Refresh manually” menu entry.

Even though the refresh algorithm is optimized, it may still take some time to refresh the plot view when the data changes, especially when the data set is large. Therefore, you may want to disable the auto-refresh feature when you are working with large data sets, and enable it again when you are done. This will avoid unnecessary refreshes.

Refresh manually#

Refresh the visualization manually.

This triggers a refresh of the plot view. It is useful when the auto-refresh feature is disabled, or when you want to force a refresh of the plot view.

Show graphical object titles#

Show/hide titles of analysis results or annotations.

This option allows you to show or hide the titles of the graphical objects (e.g., the titles of the analysis results or annotations). Hiding the titles can be useful when you want to visualize the data without any distractions, or if there are too many titles and they are overlapping.

Curve anti-aliasing#

Enable/disable anti-aliasing of curves.

Anti-aliasing makes the curves look smoother, but it may also make them look less sharp.

Note

Anti-aliasing is enabled by default.

Warning

Anti-aliasing may slow down the visualization, especially when working with large data sets.

Reset curve styles#

Reset the curve style cycle to the beginning.

When plotting curves, DataLab automatically assigns a color and a line style to each curve. Both parameters are chosen from a predefined list of colors and line styles, and are assigned in a round-robin fashion.

This menu entry allows you to reset the curve styles, so that the next time you plot curves, the first curve will be assigned the first color and the first line style of the predefined lists, and the loop will start again from there.