aborting; fattened 3D parametric plots
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg8392] aborting; fattened 3D parametric plots
- From: Gordon Kindlmann <gordon at graphics.cornell.edu>
- Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 20:41:32 -0400
- Organization: Cornell University
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
hi, I'm a happy user of Mma 2.2 for X windows. I wrote a simple module for doing 3D parametric plots whereby the plot path is represented by a curved cylinder of some radius, instead of just a one-dimensional curve. In its current form, it takes as an arguments the function I'm interested in (mapping R to R^3), the radius, and two parameters for the two dimensions of the curved cylinder's surface. The values for these two parameters are supplied by ParametricPlot3D. The whole thing works nicely for simple functions (a helix), but the thing mysteriously barfs on the function that I really care about, even though the funtion nice and smooth (all derivatives exist and are continuous). I tried a TraceDialog[] to watch where things are going wrong, and I've convinced myself that my module needs re-writing. Having decided that, I want to end the dialog that I'm in. Return[] merely steps me through one more expression evaluation. Abort[] has no effect, since in the context of a dialog it doesn't really apply to anything. Exit[], of course, kills everything. Command-. does nothing. I do Stack[] and see that I'm 6 levels deep in evaluations. I want to say, "okay, stop now", end the dialog, stop the calculation, clear the stack, but maintain the other state that I've built up during the session. How? Of course, the irony is that right now I'm wearing a Mathematica T-shirt, one that accompanied version 2 release, showing a knot of some sort, with exactly the sort of curved cylinder style parametric plot I'm aiming for. Is there a module publicly available that does what I want? I looked briefly in MathSource, perhaps I overlooked it? Thanks very much, Gordon