PLOT3STAT(1)

📦 version 7.44.0, in nixpkgs unstable

💖 PLOT3STAT(1) 💖

okay so real talk, this little icon is from the BRL-CAD manual page set, and it's genuinely one of the cutest utilities to explain: it's a command counter for plot3 files. bestie, it's giving spreadsheet but make it 3D graphics. let's go 🌸

✨ NAME ✨

plot3stat — prints stats about a plot3 format file. that's it, that's the whole gig, and it does it flawlessly 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

plot3stat [-v] [unix_plot.plot3]

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so plot3stat reads a BRL-CAD 3D UNIX plot file — that's the plot3(5) format, and the filename typically ends in .plot3 or .plot — and it tallies up how many times each drawing command shows up in there. icon behavior honestly. 👑

then it prints a summary to standard error, listing the human-readable command name (things like 3line, color, or d_3move) next to its count. so you get a little leaderboard of what's actually inside your file 😭

and if you don't hand it a file on the command line? no problem. plot3stat just reads the plot3 stream from standard input. pipe girlies stay winning 🫶

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -v — verbose mode, bestie. as the file gets parsed, it prints the name of each plot command it hits, in order, to standard output. and the statistical summary? still written to standard error, unbothered, unchanged. so you can literally split the two streams and have a whole moment 💖

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

⭐ Example 1. Summarize the commands in a plot3 file

plot3stat model.plot3

this reads model.plot3 and prints a per-command frequency summary to standard error, revealing which drawing primitives (lines, points, color changes, etc.) make up the file. lowkey forensic, highkey satisfying 🔥

⭐ Example 2. Profile a pipeline that generates plot3 on the fly

plot3rot -z 45 < model.plot3 | plot3stat -v 2>summary.txt >commands.txt

this rotates model.plot3 with plot3rot(1) and pipes the result straight into plot3stat. the verbose stream of command names gets captured in commands.txt while the count summary lands in summary.txt — letting you confirm the rotation preserved the geometry without writing an intermediate file. no temp files, no mess, main character pipeline energy ✨🧚

🔍 SEE ALSO 🔍

brlcad(1), plot3-asc(1), plot3rot(1), plot3color(1), plot3line2(1), plot3(5)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

BRL-CAD Team

This software is Copyright (c) 1990-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

💀 BUG REPORTS 💀

Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org — pls do it, they're so nice about it 🙈

okay that's the whole page, no cap. shoutout to the BRL-CAD crew and the PLOT3STAT(1) page itself — go count some commands, bestie, you got this 💜🦋

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