User-friendly graphics generator including automatic correlation
First Claim
1. A computer-based system for generating, for presentation on one or more displays, graphics representative of elements in a database, each element being characterized by one or more variables, comprising:
- a computer program product having computer readable code thereon to enable a computing device to undertake the steps of;
presenting, on the display, a variable list of at least some of the variables;
presenting, on the display, a graphical list of at least some graphics attributes of at least one non-alpha numeric graphics object selected from the group of objects consisting of spheres, pies, and bars;
permitting a user to correlate at least some of the variables to respective graphics attributes by clicking on graphics attributes in the graphical list and dragging the attributes over respective variables on the variable list; and
presenting on the display the graphics object or objects, based on the correlation of variables to graphics attributes such that the graphics object or objects have spatial characteristics that are defined by the respective variables, the graphics object being displayed with the lists.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A 3D graphics generation and display application for PCs and laptops in a business environment includes an authoring mode screen which lists database elements sought to be graphically displayed, along with a list of variables pertaining to the database elements. Also, the application presents a menu of graphics attributes, including each of the three spatial dimensions and time, as well as various graphics object attributes, such as color, size, rotation, opacity, intensity, texture, etc. The user determines whether the graphics objects are balls for a scatter plot, bars for a bar chart, pie-shaped elements for a pie chart, or other 3D representation. By clicking on a database variable in the list of variables and dragging it over an attribute on the attribute menu, the user can correlate the database variable with the graphics attribute. When the user correlates a variable to a graphics attribute, the correlation is noted by a legend that is displayed with the menu of attributes. The graphics are displayed in an animated 3D presentation with graphics attributes, including their motion over time, determined by the database variables which have been correlated to the attributes. In an alternate embodiment, the user can simply select variables to be presented, and a programmatic rule interpreter receives the variables and accesses a list of conditional rules to automatically correlate the variables to graphics attributes for presentation thereof.
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Citations
15 Claims
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1. A computer-based system for generating, for presentation on one or more displays, graphics representative of elements in a database, each element being characterized by one or more variables, comprising:
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a computer program product having computer readable code thereon to enable a computing device to undertake the steps of;
presenting, on the display, a variable list of at least some of the variables;
presenting, on the display, a graphical list of at least some graphics attributes of at least one non-alpha numeric graphics object selected from the group of objects consisting of spheres, pies, and bars;
permitting a user to correlate at least some of the variables to respective graphics attributes by clicking on graphics attributes in the graphical list and dragging the attributes over respective variables on the variable list; and
presenting on the display the graphics object or objects, based on the correlation of variables to graphics attributes such that the graphics object or objects have spatial characteristics that are defined by the respective variables, the graphics object being displayed with the lists. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
(a) whether the user permits animation;
(b) whether a time-related variable is to be presented;
(c) the number of variables to be presented;
(d) whether one or more variables to be graphed refers to a set of data;
(e) whether plural data sets for a first variable are to be presented;
(f) whether a distinct variable exists in that the distinct variable cannot be depicted on the same scale as at least a non-distinct variable; and
(g) a limit on the number of spatial dimensions to be presented.
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14. The system of claim 10, wherein the computer program product further includes computer readable code thereon to enable a computing device to undertake the act of determining whether one or more of the variables is time related.
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15. The system of claim 10, wherein each rule outputs a respective graphics presentation action.
Specification