As your measurement progresses you of course want to know the results as they are gathered. Sigma provides you with this information in two ways simultaneously. In one window you get the overview of the experiment through 3D plots (top picture). In case you are varying more than two independent variables (for instance temperature, frequency and DC-bias) this is no problem. Sigma will simply ask you which variables should go on the axes of the 3D plots. The variable that didn’t fit will become a tab selector: simply click on the value you are interested in and you will see all plots for that particular value.

While 3D plots are great for giving an overview they are very poor in allowing accurate read-outs of data. Therefore another Sigma window continuously shows your data in a twin-2D plot window. The examples to the right show you one of the graphs for each of the two main measurement modes (time scan and frequency scan).

In order to make detection of events such as phase transitions easy, the new data are plotted point by point as they are collected, on a background of the two last scans.