Orientation diagrams allow you an opportunity to further analyze the anisotropy of data contained in the Fry plot. Orientation diagrams investigate the orientation distribution of the connecting lines between points in the Fry plot.

When considering a Fry plot, lines can be drawn between all points in the plot. Each such line has a specific length and orientation. If the original data set is a perfectly random point distribution, lines of all lengths will be homogeneously distributed in all directions. If the original distribution is not random, lines of particular lengths and/or orientations will occur more frequently displaying a fabric. Therefore this technique allows to quantify the direction of preferred orientations of point distributions that can be seen in the Fry plot.

DotProc's Orientation diagram window looks as follows:

The boxes "From distance" and "To distance" define the line length range for which the orientation data is to be analysed.

When Orientation diagram window is active the status line indicates number of poits under the cursor together with the angle and percentage distribution of the points.

The data can be saved as tab-delimited text files (or copied to clipboard) that can be opened in data management programs such as Excel, where the data can be analyzed further.

The following attributes of the Orientation diagram can be changed by selecting "Tools / Settings" menu item: