1.242 FAQ-1021 How do I make a scatter plot and apply a heat map look based on density of the points?

Last Update: 4/16/2020

If you have XY data and want to make a scatter plot with dots colored by their local density, you can highlight the XY columns and select menu Plot: Basic 2D: Density Dots to make the plot.

Minimum Origin Version Required: Origin 2020

Graph display issue under page view mode

The graph is set to Window View mode by default after plotting. The symbol size is autoatically set to 0 for the purpose of enhancing plotting speed. If you now change the graph to Page View from Plot Details dialog, it will show very differently (See below). To solve this issue and recover the display under Page View mode, you can simply increase the symbol size to 1.

DensityDotsPlot.png


When density dots graph is exported to image file or copied/pasted to Word, symbol size will be readjusted for display consistency. The conditions for the graph to be generated properly is as follows:

  1. Graph page should be in Window View mode.
  2. There is only one layer for the graph. If there are more then one layer, other layers need to be sharing the same area as the primary layer.
  3. There is at least one Dots plot in the graph. Dots plot here means (a) Symbol is filled square. (b) Symbol size is zero.




Keywords: density, heat map, page view, window view, colormap