The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 13, 2001
Filed:
Nov. 21, 1997
Earl D. Sacerdoti, Alamo, CA (US);
David Foote, San Francisco, CA (US);
Mark T. Davis, San Francisco, CA (US);
Leigh Rosser, San Anselmo, CA (US);
Humberto C. Gerola, Saratoga, CA (US);
Philip J. Bernosky, Saratoga, CA (US);
John M. McGraw, Atherton, CA (US);
Wolfgang H. Gerola, Saratoga, CA (US);
Portola Dimensional Systems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
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.