PLOT3COLOR(1)

💅 PLOT3COLOR(1) — the UnixPlot color-command tea 🎨

okay so you're in the PLOT3COLOR(1) girlies now, welcome, this page is short and it ATE 💖

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✨ NAME ✨

plot3color — it outputs a UnixPlot color command. that's it. that's the whole gig. lowkey iconic for how simple it is 🫶

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

plot3color _r_ _g_ _b_ [< unix_plot] > unix_plot

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

bestie. listen. plot3color writes a UnixPlot color command to standard output, and that command sets the current drawing color to whatever r, g, and b values you handed it 💅

each of those values is an integer from 0 to 255, ranging from black (0) all the way up to full intensity, for the Red, Green, and Blue components respectively. so like, yes, it's RGB, yes, it's 0–255, no, we're not doing hex here, keep up ✨

now here's the cute part — to allow use in a pipeline, an optional UnixPlot stream may be supplied on standard input 🌈 its entire contents are copied through to standard output first, and the new color command is then appended at the end. this makes it easy to recolor or extend a plot produced by another tool, and honestly? slay. main character energy for a tiny utility ngl 💀

⚠️ real talk though: standard output must not be a terminal — plot3color refuses to run if stdout is a tty. no cap, it will just say no 🙈

the command is primarily an aid for building plot3(5) graphs and figures from shell scripts. tiny tool, big plot energy 🎀

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Example 1. Append a color command to an existing plot

plot3color 255 0 0 < drawing.plot3 > red.plot3

copies the UnixPlot stream from drawing.plot3 to red.plot3, then appends a command that switches the current drawing color to full red (255 0 0). full red. no notes. periodt ❤️🔥

Example 2. Build a colored plot from scratch in a pipeline

plot3color 0 255 0 | plot3line2 0 0 100 100 > line.plot3

emits a green color command and pipes it into plot3line2(1), producing a plot3(5) file that draws a green line from (0,0) to (100,100) 🌿 like?? the pipeline ate and left no crumbs 💚

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

brlcad(1), plot3line2(1), plot3-plot3(1), plot3(5)

go read those next, iykyk 📚

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

BRL-CAD Team — the ones who made this happen 🫡

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🎀 COPYRIGHT 🎀

this software is Copyright (c) 1989-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory. legal stuff but make it cute 💅

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💌 BUG REPORTS 💌

reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org — tell them everything, they wanna know 🐛✨

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this one came from the BRL-CAD crew (that's the source/version, xoxo) and the date on the original was the same as always — go off, plot queen 👑🌈

plot3color — short manpage, long lashes, we love to see it 💅🦋