PICTURA: a program to draw three-dimensional surfaces
D. H. McCollough, R. W. McGaffey, Steve Penny · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1982
PICTURA was originally written by Melvin L. Prueitt at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Designed to be called as subroutine from a programmer's source code, PICTURA can draw three-dimensional surfaces with hidden lines optionally removed and with designated elevations in the surface drawn in selected colors. PICTURA can now be used as a stand-alone program through the use of a user interface. The user issues simple commands to set up his data, choose a viewpoint, and specify various other options. When running in a batch mode, PICTURA can produce a series of plots on several different plotting devices. When running in an interactive mode, the user can draw a surface on a graphics terminal, change the options and redraw until the plot is satisfactory. The program uses the DISSPLA graphics package. This report serves as a reference for using PICTURA as a subroutine called from a user's program or as a package complete with user-oriented commands that require little or no programming experience.