Skip to main content

Charts

Charts in mXrap provide powerful visualisation and analysis capabilities for your data. This guide covers the key features and interactions available across all chart types in mXrap.

Chart Interactions​

mXrap 6.1 introduced several interactive features that allow you to manipulate and explore chart data directly with your mouse.

Mouse-Hover Information​

Charts now display the location of the mouse cursor on the visible axes. When hover information is enabled for a series, hovering the mouse cursor over a point will display a tooltip containing detailed information about that point, including:

  • Exact X and Y coordinate values (e.g., event date and magnitude)
  • Marker colour input values (e.g., seismic moment) when using coloured markers
Chart showing mouse cursor location and hover tooltip
Chart showing mouse cursor location and hover tooltip

Double-Click Actions​

You can configure what happens when users double-click on a point in a series. For example, double-clicking on a seismic event could adjust filters to show other events within a range of time and space around that event. This feature enables powerful interactive exploration of your data.

Interactive Editing​

With editing enabled, users can hold the Shift key and click-and-drag points to interactively move them to new locations in the chart. Editing can be enabled independently for each axis:

  • Single-axis editing: Points can only be moved along the enabled axis
  • Dual-axis editing: Points can be moved freely in both directions

When you move a point, the underlying data is updated automatically if the column is editable (defined in a variables tool or from a write-enabled import CSV tool).

View Controls​

Charts usually auto-adjust their ranges to the input data. This is often what you want, but occasionally it does make it harder to compare charts with different filters applied. A handy tip is to enable the 'Zoom and Pan' option in the top-left. This disables the auto-zoom and pan so then if you change the filter, you can compare the two charts. An example below is the frequency-magnitude chart for all events, compared with the events for just the last month. Enabling the Zoom and Pan means the axes remain the same for both charts.

You can also zoom and pan to a different area. Remember if you scroll the mouse in the chart itself, it zooms both axes together. You can zoom a single axis independently by scrolling on the axis label area.

Frequency-magnitude chart showing zoom and pan controls enabled in the top-left corner
Frequency-magnitude chart showing zoom and pan controls enabled in the top-left corner

Selection Features​

Selections provide powerful filtering capabilities beyond traditional min/max range filters. You can create selections in any chart, 3D View, or table to filter your data.

Creating and Using Selections​

  1. Create a new selection by drawing a selection box on any chart (e.g., an apparent stress time history chart).
Apparent stress time history chart with a selection box drawn around high stress events
Apparent stress time history chart with a selection box drawn around high stress events
  1. Apply the selected events to your filter by going to the Events Ranges panel, clicking 'Copy selections to Base filter', and switching on the selection filter. Now only the selected events will be used in other charts and analyses.
Events Ranges panel showing 'Copy selections to Base filter' button and selection filter toggle switch
Events Ranges panel showing 'Copy selections to Base filter' button and selection filter toggle switch
  1. To turn off the blue selection icons, go to the Events series panel and turn off the 'Highlight selected' option.
Events series panel showing the 'Highlight selected' option toggle
Events series panel showing the 'Highlight selected' option toggle

For more details, see the Filters documentation.

Series Controls​

Marker Styles and customisation​

mXrap provides extensive marker style customisation options:

  • Adjust lightness and transparency of a series
  • Change colour and image of single-point markers
  • Modify colour of survey series
  • Categorical legends for better data visualisation
Marker style customisation options
Marker style customisation options

For detailed information on marker styles, see the Marker Styles documentation.

Points and Lines Display​

You can control whether a chart series displays as points, lines, or both:

  • Enable plotting as points: Show individual data points
  • Enable plotting as lines: Connect points with lines
  • Line start/end points: Specify where lines should start or end (useful for histograms)

For lines-only series, you can create lines that fill the horizontal or vertical range of the chart window by specifying only one coordinate.

Chart Types​

mXrap supports various chart types for different analysis needs:

  • Frequency-magnitude charts: analyse event distributions and Gutenberg-Richter relationships
  • Time series charts: Track parameters over time
  • Diurnal charts: Examine patterns by time of day
  • Distance to survey charts: Investigate relationships between seismicity and surveys
  • Histograms: View parameter distributions
  • Cumulative distribution charts: analyse cumulative trends
  • Energy-moment charts: Examine relationships between energy and moment

Understanding Log vs Linear Scale​

When using charts like the frequency-magnitude chart, remember that they typically use log scale. This can affect how you interpret the data:

  • Log scale: Better for viewing the full range of data, especially at the tail (largest events)
  • Linear scale: Shows relative proportions more clearly but makes small values harder to see

The Gutenberg-Richter distribution is a statistical model that may appear to not match large events well in log scale, but this is often due to the scale distortion. In linear scale, the fit typically appears more reasonable.

For more details, see Frequency-magnitude chart anatomy.

Export and customisation​

The export panel, located on the right-hand side of charts, enables you to generate images, files, and videos with just a few clicks.

Chart Content Options​

Configure chart appearance using the 'Content:' options to toggle which components are displayed:

  • Header and footer
  • Axis titles
  • Axis ticks
  • Grid lines
Chart Content Options
Chart Content Options

Image Generation​

Create high-quality images with precise sizing using the 'Export dims:' controls. This feature is particularly valuable for preparing presentations and academic papers that require figures with specific dimensions or font sizes.

Video Creation​

Generate custom videos showcasing your data, analysis workflows, and results.

For complete details on export options, see the Export Panel documentation.

Training Resources​

Introduction to selections. How to make a new selection in 3D views and charts, and/or multiple selections, highlight or show only selections controls. Remember the Quick Reference Guide is handy to remember the controls for adjusting the selection boxes.

How to use selections in the main events filter. You can show only selected in the tool where you have made the selections, but for the selections to affect other tools and calculations, you need to apply it to the base filter.
Last updated on