Appearance of Non-grouped Data

When you use statements such as SERIESPLOT, BANDPLOT, NEEDLEPLOT, ELLIPSE, STEPPLOT, FRINGEPLOT, LINEPARM, and VECTORPLOT to draw plots containing lines, the same style element, GraphDataDefault, is used for all line and marker properties. You can think of these plots as "non-specialized," and they all have the same default appearance when used in overlays

In the graph that is produced by the following code, the series lines have the same default appearance.

proc template;
  define statgraph series;
    begingraph;
      entrytitle "Overlay of Multiple SERIESPLOTs";
      layout overlay / yaxisopts=(label="IBM Stock Price");
        seriesplot x=date y=high / curvelabel="High";
        seriesplot x=date y=low /  curvelabel="Low";
      endlayout;
    endgraph;
  end;
run;

proc sgrender data=sashelp.stocks template=series;
   where date between "1jan2002"d and "31dec2005"d 
         and stock="IBM";
run;

To ensure that the series lines differ in appearance, you can use any style element with line properties. A set of carefully constructed style elements named GraphData1 to GraphDataN (where N=12 for most styles, some styles might have fewer) are normally used for this purpose. These elements all use different marker symbols, line pattern, fill colors (COLOR=) and line and marker colors (CONTRASTCOLOR=). All line and marker colors are of different hues but with the same brightness, which means that all twelve colors can be distinguished but none stands out more than another. Fill colors are based on the same hue but have less saturation, making them similar but more muted than the corresponding contrast colors.

In the following template code, the style elements GraphData1 and GraphData2 are used to change the default appearance of the series lines in the graph.

layout overlay / yaxisopts=(label="IBM Stock Price");
  seriesplot x=date y=high / curvelabel="High" lineattrs=GraphData1 ;
  seriesplot x=date y=low /  curvelabel="Low"  lineattrs=GraphData2 ;
endlayout;

Note: This same graph could also have been achieved by specifying CYCLEATTRS=TRUE on the LAYOUT OVERLAY statement and omitting the LINEATTRS= options on the plot statements.

Using GraphData1 and GraphData2 Style Elements

By default, the GraphDataN style elements can be used interchangeably to achieve visual distinction. All of these elements vary color, line pattern, and marker symbols to gain maximum differentiation. Sometimes, you might not want to vary all properties at once. For example, to force only the color to change but not the line pattern, you can override one or more properties that you want to hold constant.

layout overlay / yaxisopts=(label="IBM Stock Price");
  seriesplot x=date y=high / curvelabel="High"
    lineattrs=GraphData1(pattern=shortdash) ;
  seriesplot x=date y=low / curvelabel="Low"
    lineattrs=GraphData2(pattern=shortdash) ;
endlayout;

Other statements such as DENSITYPLOT, REGRESSIONPLOT, LOESSPLOT, PBSPLINEPLOT, MODELBAND, REFERENCELINE, and DROPLINE are "specialized" in the sense that their default line appearance is governed by other style elements such as GraphFit, GraphConfidence, GraphPrediction, GraphReference, or some other specialized style element. When these statements are used in conjunction with the "non-specialized" plot statements, there are differences in appearance.