Plot Controls (Simple)
Plot Controls is the settings half of the simple plotter. You choose which columns go on which axis, how points are encoded, and which bags to overlay; the drawing itself happens in the companion Plots View (Simple) panel. The panel also shows per-axis summary statistics and exports the plotted values to Excel, CSV, or PDF.
Where to find it
View → Quantitative → Plot Controls (Simple). You can also right-click the map with two or more points selected and pick Plot Controls under Visualize. Open Plots View (Simple) alongside it, or apply the Quantitative Analysis or Coding layout preset, which opens both.
What it plots
The panel reads the most recently selected bag. Select a bag first: with nothing selected, the dropdowns have nothing to offer and the statistics cards read “Select a feature to begin.” Selecting a different bag switches the plot to that bag’s points.
The feature list is built from the space’s numeric, categorical, and date columns, plus four built-in dimensions available on every axis:
| Option | Value plotted |
|---|---|
| X coordinate | The point’s first projection coordinate |
| Y coordinate | The point’s second projection coordinate |
| _Path Ordering | The point’s index in the bag, 1, 2, 3, … |
| _Distance-Based Path Ordering | Cumulative projection distance walking the bag in order |
Controls
Dimensions
X, Y, and Z each take one feature. How many you fill decides the plot type drawn in Plots View:
- X only renders a histogram.
- X and Y render a 2D scatter plot.
- X, Y, and Z render a 3D scatter plot.
Leave a dropdown on its blank entry to clear that axis. There is no KDE, box, or violin option here; those live in Plots (Bokeh).
Encoding
Size, Color, Opacity, and Shape each map a feature onto that visual channel. Leave one blank to turn the channel off. Color additionally offers _Cluster, which colors points by the cluster they belong to.
Scaling rescales the plotted values: minmax to the 0-1 range, zscore to mean 0 and standard deviation 1. Its blank entry plots raw values. Scaling affects the drawing and the regression fit, not the statistics cards.
Toolbar
The row of buttons under the dropdowns:
- Local Comparison / Global Comparison toggles between plotting only the selected bag and overlaying every bag in the space as extra traces.
- Bag from Selection turns the points you selected inside the plot into a new bag named
Plot Selection N. Disabled while the plot selection is empty. - Clear Selection drops the plot selection.
With only X assigned, two more buttons appear:
- Show Trace(s) toggles the line drawn through the bin counts.
- Show Histogram(s) toggles the bars themselves. Both are on by default.
With X and Y assigned and Z empty, one appears instead:
- Show Regression Line(s) fits a least-squares line per trace and labels it with its R². While it is on, a dropdown offers a confidence band at None, 99%, 95%, 90%, 80%, or 50% CI. The default is 95%.
Bag Selection and Bag Refinement
Bag Selection is a checkbox list of every bag in the space. Checked bags are drawn as additional traces in the same plot, up to 10 at a time; the eleventh checkbox does nothing until you uncheck another.
Bag Refinement activates once a bag is checked. Choose the Flat Euclidean mode and, with exactly two bags checked, the panel reports average, maximum, and minimum distance and lists points that would sit better in the other bag. Show Lines draws those distances on the map, Move applies one suggestion, Refine All applies all of them, and Save writes the moves back to the bags. Until you press Save, the moves are provisional.
Export Plot Data
The green Export Plot Data button opens a menu with Export as Excel (.xlsx), Export as CSV (.csv), and Export as PDF (.pdf). Each export contains the plotted X, Y, and Z columns for the current bag, one row per point, and nothing else: no titles, no point ids, and no overlaid comparison bags. Excel and PDF load their writers on demand, so the button reads “Preparing…” briefly and reports an error in place if that load fails.
Statistics cards
One card appears per assigned axis, showing that dimension’s Count, [Min, Average, Max], Std. Dev, and the titles of the minimum and maximum points. The cards describe the selected bag only, not the overlaid comparison bags, and ignore the Scaling setting.
How to use it
- Select a bag. Plot Controls follows the last bag you selected.
- Set X. A histogram of that column appears in Plots View.
- Set Y to switch to a scatter plot, and Z for a 3D scatter.
- Encode. Map a third column onto Color or Size to carry more information.
- Compare. Check other bags under Bag Selection to overlay them, up to ten.
- Fit and export. Turn on Show Regression Line(s) with a confidence level, then use Export Plot Data to take the numbers out.
Limits
- One bag drives the plot: the most recently selected one.
- At most 10 comparison bags overlay it.
- The Quantitative label at the top of the panel is display-only. The categorical plotting mode it once switched to is disabled in the shipped build.
- There is no agent button in this panel. Agents and the Composer set the plot’s X, Y, and Z dimensions and read the current plot selection through the Mantis SDK.