Portola Dimensional Systems, Inc.

Wolfgang H Gerola

Mark Thomas Davis

Earl David Sacerdoti

Philip J Bernosky

David Foote

Leigh Rosser

Humberto C Gerola

John M McGraw

A 3D graphics generation and display application for PCs and laptops in a business environment includes an authoring mode screen which lists database elements sought to be graphically displayed, along with a list of variables pertaining to the database elements. Also, the application presents a menu of graphics attributes, including each of the three spatial dimensions and time, as well as various graphics object attributes, such as color, size, rotation, opacity, intensity, texture, etc. The user determines whether the graphics objects are balls for a scatter plot, bars for a bar chart, pie-shaped elements for a pie chart, or other 3D representation. By clicking on a database variable in the list of variables and dragging it over an attribute on the attribute menu, the user can correlate the database variable with the graphics attribute. When the user correlates a variable to a graphics attribute, the correlation is noted by a legend that is displayed with the menu of attributes. The graphics are displayed in an animated 3D presentation with graphics attributes, including their motion over time, determined by the database variables which have been correlated to the attributes.

User-friendly graphics generator using direct manipulation

Growing community of inventors

Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Wolfgang H Gerola