PLOT3-DM(1)

📦 version 7.44.0, in nixpkgs unstable

💅 PLOT3-DM(1) — the BRL-CAD manual page, bestie edition 🎀

okay so this is plot3-dm, part of the BRL-CAD fam ✨ (yes the manual-page name goes up there in the title, iykyk). sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

🌈 NAME 🌈

plot3-dm — literally opens a display manager window so you can interactively view 3-D UNIX plot files in it. that's the whole vibe. 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

plot3-dm [-t o|X] [plot_file ...]

that's it. that's the incantation. 🪄

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so plot3-dm opens up an interactive display-manager window and renders one or more BRL extended three-dimensional UNIX plot files right into it (peep plot3-fb(1) for the plot-file lore). once it's up you can rotate, translate, and zoom the view with the mouse — main character energy, honestly — and there's a small set of Tcl commands for scripting the view and managing all the plots you've loaded.

big sis energy: this program is a sample application distributed with BRL-CAD to demonstrate how to drive the libdm display-manager library 💅 and its source is installed alongside the other sample applications, so you can go read it. no gatekeeping here 🫶

you can pass one or more plot_file arguments on the command line, and each one gets loaded as a named object — the name is the basename of the file. cute, right? ✨

and if you give it no plot_file and standard input is not a terminal, then plot commands get read from standard input instead. plot twist. 😭

🦋 THE COMMANDS (yes, you type them) 🦋

once the window is open, commands are entered on standard input. here's the lineup, and yes they all slay:

  • openpl file ... — load even more plot files, because why not
  • ls — list the plots you've loaded 📋
  • draw name / erase name / closepl name — control individual plots, one at a time
  • zoom factor — zoom it, bestie 🔍
  • vrot x y z — rotate the view on those axes
  • ae azim elev [twist] — set the azimuth/elevation view (with optional twist 🌀)
  • reset — fit all plots to the window, one fresh start
  • exit (or q) — bye 💀

🐭 MOUSE MANIPULATION 🐭

you don't even have to type, ngl. the left, middle, and right drag modes rotate, translate, and zoom the scene respectively. literally drag and go ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -t o|X — picks the display-manager backend. X (the default) uses the X11 display manager; o (or O) asks for the OpenGL (ogl) display manager. any other value just falls back to the X backend, no drama 🙈
  • -h, -? — print a short usage message and dip. that's it. 👋

🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

Example 1. View a plot generated from a BRL-CAD geometry database

rt -o model.plot3 model.g component
plot3-dm model.plot3

so you render a region of the geometry in model.g out to a 3-D UNIX plot file with rt(1), then open it in an interactive window where you can rotate and zoom to inspect the wireframe. it's giving ✨science✨ honestly 🔥

Example 2. Load several plots at once using the OpenGL backend

plot3-dm -t o first.plot3 second.plot3

both plot files open together in the OpenGL display manager 🦋 and each file becomes a separately named, individually drawable object that you can toggle with the draw and erase commands. so organized. so iconic. 👑

🔍 SEE ALSO 🔍

plot3-fb(1), plot3-ps(1), plot3rot(1), rt(1), libdm(3), brlcad(1)

go read those too, they're all part of the family 💜

👑 AUTHOR 👑

BRL-CAD Team 💖

This software is Copyright (c) 1989-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

(put some respect on it ⭐)

🐛 BUG REPORTS 🐛

found a bug? a problem? something acting sus? 😭 reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org. they wanna know, fr fr 📬

k bye bestie 🎀 that was the plot3-dm(1) page from BRL-CAD — mwah, go rotate something 💅✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from