Importing Data
Importing numeric data into OmniGraphSketcher is pretty straightforward. In many cases, you can just select it from your spreadsheet, outline, or text document, copy it, and then paste it into a graph. If the data is in a text file, it can be comma-separated (CSV) or tab-delimited. Here are some tips for amicable importing.
OmniGraphSketcher makes its best guess at the meaning of the data you give it, based on these situations:
- One column of numbers: Each row becomes a point with the imported number as its Y value; incrementing integers (1, 2, 3…) are assigned for the X values.
- Two columns of numbers: Each row becomes a point, with the first number as its X value, and the second number as its Y value.
- More than two columns of numbers: Each row becomes several points, with the first number as their X value, and the following numbers for their Y values.
- A column of text: If there is only one number column, then the text column becomes labels on the x-axis. If there are two number columns, the text becomes labels on the points. If there are more than two number columns, the text is not used.
Pitfalls:
- OmniGraphSketcher doesn’t (yet) interpret dates. If you paste in data with labels that indicate uniform spans of time, like “January 2009, February 2009, March 2009…”, they are interpreted as text and applied to the X values 1, 2, 3…. But if your date labels are not uniformly spaced, OmniGraphSketcher doesn’t try to space them out for you. To get around this, you could first convert your dates to integers (using, for example, the DATEDIF function in Apple Numbers to calculate a number of days).