ILNumerics zoom selection rectangle and accessing the plotted data in ILPlotcube

Question

I plot a surface in a Plot Cube with TwoDMode = true, when I try to zoom using the mouse left drag, the selection zoom rectangle goes behind the surface, therefore, it is not properly shown. Is it possible to force the selection rectangle to be on top of the surface? Moreover, is it possible by hovering or clicking the mouse on the surface, the X, Y and Z values be shown in some textboxes? Thank you very much.

Answer 1

Surfaces are inherently 3D objects. By default, they are intended to be used with ILPlotCube.TwoDMode set to false. But you can try to access the selection rectangle object and modify it accordingly. Try starting with plotCube.ZoomRectangle.Lines.Positions by raising its Z coordinate in order to move it closer to the camera.

Archieving the point of the surface under the cursor is not easy - but doable. Keep in mind, only the vertices of the surface tiles are known explicitly. You can use picking and the mouse events to get informed, if the mouse is over the surface:

surface.MouseMove += (_s,_a) => { yourHandler(_a); }

Afterwards, you are on your own. First, you will have to find the actual surface 3D coordinates. If you can be sure that the surface has not been rotated, you can take a look here.

The method in that thread gives you the surface X and Y coordinates. You can go further and (manually) find the corresponding tile for that position. For the final and exact X,Y,Z coordinates, you would have to interpolate the tile (triangle) vertices to the actual mouse position, using barycentric interpolation.

In order to show the 3D coordinate, you can simply use an ILLabel. You may or may not want to put that into an ILScreenObject.