The following sections describe the building blocks in more detail and provide cross-references to the chapters that contain complete information. Scenes A scene is a like a painter's canvas that you use in Visionary to display information retrieved from a database. A scene can also include other graphic elements, such as static text and images, and navigational tools such as wormholes and jumps to other scenes. A Visionary world is made up of one or more scenes. For more information about scenes, see Chapter 4, "Creating Scenes." Data Sources A data source represents the returned values from an SQL query. You must define data sources in Visionary Studio before you can display data in a world. To make a data source visible in a scene, you create a layout and modify the data element of the layout. For more information about data sources, see Chapter 3, "Creating Data Sources."
Layouts A layout is a display format that determines how data appears in a scene. When the displayed data comes from an SQL query, the layout contains data points that represent each row returned by the query. Examples of layouts include pie chart, stock chart, and linear map. For more information about layouts, see Chapter 5, "Displaying Data in a Scene." Data Elements A data element is the portion of a layout that is based on the data source and displayed according to the layout style. The properties and child objects of a data element determine the format of each data point in a layout. For example, in a pie chart each column returned by the query appears as a wedge. By modifying the properties of the wedge, you modify the appearance of the entire pie chart. The wedge is a data element-the portion of the layout that is based on the data source. For more information about data elements, see Chapter 5, "Displaying Data in a Scene." Parameters A parameter is a value assigned to a variable before an operation is executed by a program. When you want to pass information to scenes and objects in your world, you use parameters. Visionary provides three types of parameters:
For information about scene parameters, see Chapter 4, "Creating Scenes."
For information about query parameters, see Chapter 3, "Creating Data Sources."
Resources A resource is an object that can be shared among scenes in a Visionary world. Examples of resources include color maps, color sequences, stock images, and viewer classes. For more information about resources, see Chapter 11, "Adding Resources and Global Parameters to a World."
Navigation Features When you create a world, you can specify navigation features for scenes, data elements, and layouts. Examples of navigation features include levels of detail, viewpoints, wormholes, and event actions. For more information about navigation features, see Chapter 8, "Adding Navigation Features to a Scene."
