This Flash Forum article provides instructions and resources for producing customized graphing applets using the Macromedia Flash (either Flash MX 2004 or the more recent Flash 8) programming environment. After working through this material you will be able to build a fully customized 3D Grapher for your own webpage using your own instructions, your own color schemes and your own choice of functionality.

The compressed file grapher3d.zip contains two templates and code referenced within the article, and the sixteen page Developer's Guide ( grapher3d_guide.pdf ) gives detailed instructions for some specific customization tasks. Within this article, there is a brief description of each of the templates including active versions of each to demonstrate its functionality. In addition, we list some of the specific customizations that are addressed within the Developer's Guide.  Note that this guide assumes some familiarity with the article Flash Tools for Developers: Function Grapher, also available in the MathDL Flash Forum.

The Flash 8 programming environment for Windows or Mac can be "borrowed" on a 30 day trial basis from macromedia.com.

The following outline describes what can be accomplished by following the 3D Function Grapher guide after downloading the source files to your machine with Flash MX 2004 or Flash 8 installed.

1. Introduction. Download and unzip the relevant files including the documented source code and the detailed pdf file with instructions for customization.
2. Elements of the 3D Grapher's fla file. An overview of the structure of the source code.  This section should be supplemented with the article Flash Tools for Developers: Function Grapher, also available in the MathDL Flash Forum.
3. Customizing appearance of the 3D Grapher.  Instructions for resizing the graph cube and the underlying graphing board using Template 1, and instructions for changing colors of background, border, axes, and labels using Template 2.  Instructions are also given for changing the choices for opacity and preprogrammed examples in Template 2.
4. The basic outline of the program. To change the actual functionality of the program, one needs to understand the organization of the code. In this section of the guide, we explain the functions prepGraph(), drawGraph(), and procInput(), and we give a technical overview of the 3D Engine used to render the graphs.
5. The Description of Custom Classes.  This section gives a technical description of the five custom classes contained within the package edu.uriship.math.grapher3d. We include it here for completeness.

Download the sixteen page grapher3d_guide.pdf (a 970 KB file) for detailed instructions for customizing the 3D Function Grapher.

Download grapher3d.zip file (a 1.0 MB file) and unzip it in a folder on your computer. You will see a grapher3d folder which contains all the files related to this article. You will be particularly interested in the following:

• The folder edu contains all the necessary ActionScript classes in a nested sequence of folders. Note that for Flash to be able to find the classes, the folder edu must reside in the same folder as the template you are working on.
• The two source files for the templates that will be discussed are g3d_template1.fla and g3d_template2.fla.

Working right from the folder grapher3d, you can open one of the two template .fla files in Flash MX 2004 Professional or Flash 8 Professional and begin customizing the template to your liking. Alternatively, if you prefer a clean working environment, you can copy the edu folder and the templates into a new folder.