Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer > Appendix > Examples of Display Types

Image 1: 500 hPa height contours	Image 2: Oblique view in 3D of colored contours of wind speed at 250 hPa
Image 3: Color-filled contours of surface temperature	Image 4: Mean sea level pressure as a color-shaded image, and contour lines

A plan view is a horizontal display of 2D data on the map, or a horizontal cross-section of 3D data. Conventional contour plots of data on a map are a plan view.

Plan views can be displayed in several ways:

• with solid or dashed contour lines
• with contour lines colored by value
• with color-filled contours
• with "color-shaded" images (all data grid cells colored by value, which may be smoothed)

Colors help distinguish values and subtle features, and if used carefully can be an intuitive indication of value and trend, such as using "hot" colors for higher or important values.

An IDV 3D Plan View can be set to any level of the data levels in the data source, or between data levels, in which case interpolation is used to estimate the data values in the plan view. A colored square selector point in the left corner of the 3D plan view can be moved up and down by dragging the mouse button to re-position the level. You can make several 3D plan views at the same time, for one or more parameters in 3D data. To learn how to make a display, see Getting Started: Plots from Gridded Data.

You can control the display appearance of plan views with the associated Plan View Control

 

Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer > Appendix > Examples of Display Types