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Setting streamline appearance


Figure 43

The Streamline plot's streamlines can be drawn as lines, tubes, or ribbons (see figure). Drawing the streamlines as lines, which is the default, is faster than drawing them as tubes or ribbons but it is not as visually appealing. When streamlines are drawn as tubes, the streamlines appear thicker and they have can have a small sphere that indicates the streamline's starting point. When the streamlines are drawn as ribbons, they twist in response to the vector field's vorticity.


Figure 44

To display the streamlines as tubes, you can select Tubes from the Display as combo box on the Streamline plot attributes window's Appearance tab (see figure). To display the streamlines as ribbons, you can select Ribbons from the Display as combo box. When streamlines are drawn as tubes, you can elect to show their start position by clicking the Show start check box. The look of streamline tubes and ribbons can be further modified by changing the radius, which affects the thickness of tubes and ribbons by typing a new value into the Radius text field. When the Streamline plot is drawn as lines, the line width can be set by selecting a new line width from the Line width combo box.