The cells in an mplot can be selected/deselected by clicking on them. Clicking with button 1 will select/deselect that cell. Using button 2, the row containing the cell will be selected or deselected, and with button 3 the column will be selected or deselected. A selected cell will be shown with a colored background, with an index number printed.
Only one mplot window can have selections. Clicking in a new window will deselect all selections in other mplot windows.
At present, the selections are used to facilitate plotting of multidimensional plots, such as those obtained from the -k option of the check command. If selections exist, only the data from the selected cells will be plotted from the associated multidimensional vectors in the plot command.
For example, after running ``check -k'', suppose one has a resulting vector v(1) (which will contain data from all of the trials). If not using ``mplot -on'' during the run, one can type ``mplot'' after the run to display the pass/fail results. In the mplot window, select one of the cells. Then, ``plot v(1)'' will plot the v(1) from that trial only. If no cells are selected, or all cells are selected, ``plot v(1)'' would show the superimposed v(1) traces from all trials. The index number that appears in the cell is the vector index, so for example if a single box is selected with index 4, ``plot v(1)'' would be equivalent to ``plot v(1)[4]''. Note that the selection mechanism allows combinations of traces to be plotted which can't easily be obtained from indexing.
This capability is carried a step further for general multidimensional plots. If one enters ``mplot vector'' where vector is the name of a multidimensional vector from whatever source, an mplot will appear. If the vector originated from operating range or Monte Carlo analysis, the resulting mplot will appear (the pass/fail results are saved in the plot structure, as well as in the output file). Otherwise, the mplot has nothing to do with range analysis, and all cells are marked "fail". Either case allows the selection mechanism to be used for displaying the plots.
Suppose for example one has a multidimensional plot from a loop-transient analysis. Entering ``mplot time'' will bring up a dummy mplot whose cells represent the loop iterations (time is the scale vector for the plot, but any data vector in the plot would suffice). Then, by selecting the cells, one can choose which iterations will be visible when vectors from the plot are plotted with the plot command.
The plot window will use a ``flat'' dimension map which can subsequently be used to control which dimensions are visible. The mplot selections set the initial state of this map.