# Achieving left-handed axes (z down, x right, y in)

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/achieving-left-handed-axes-z-down-x-right-y-in/8813
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [January 20, 2022, 9:23pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/achieving-left-handed-axes-z-down-x-right-y-in/8813 "2022-01-20T21:23:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Victor\_Koehne\_Ramalh](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/victor_koehne_ramalh/32/8412_2.png) [@Victor\_Koehne\_Ramalh](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Victor_Koehne_Ramalh)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2022, 9:23pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/achieving-left-handed-axes-z-down-x-right-y-in/8813/1 "2022-01-20T21:23:41Z")

</div>

Hey all, I am trying to plot a velocity field of the subsurface in geophysical standards, which is a left-handed axis, i.e. z positive downwards, x positive to the right, and y positive inwards. The thing is Paraview uses right-handed axes by default. After loading the raw data, I tried applying filter-\>Transform with a rotation of 180 of the third axis and translation of zmax (1400) on the first axis (because the whole block moved down from the z-axis after rotation). The thing is that my Z-axis was supposed to be from 0 to 1400, but it is 1400 to 0. Any tips on what to try?

Thanks

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Venke](https://discourse.paraview.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/6de8d8/32.png) [@Venke](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Venke)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2022, 8:47am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/achieving-left-handed-axes-z-down-x-right-y-in/8813/2 "2022-01-21T08:47:37Z")

</div>

Victor,  
If you can live with a visualisation in a right-handed system, you could just scale the z-coordinates with -1. That is what I do with my geophyiscal data (which is not always in the left-handed system, depending on the software…).  
If you then want axis labels matching the expectation of the viewer (left-handed system), you can use the Axes Grid, in the advanced settings (gear icon) use Data Scale (Z) = -1. Only the Orientation Axis might be confusing then, so you might want to discard it for your visualisation.  
Cheers,  
Venke

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Victor\_Koehne\_Ramalh](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/victor_koehne_ramalh/32/8412_2.png) [@Victor\_Koehne\_Ramalh](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Victor_Koehne_Ramalh)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2022, 4:13pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/achieving-left-handed-axes-z-down-x-right-y-in/8813/3 "2022-01-21T16:13:24Z")

</div>

Dear Venke,

I believe this is the cleanest solution (only two steps), thanks!  
Just for clarity for future readers, on filter-\>Transform, my first step of rotating the 3rd axis by 180 and translating the first one by zmax is equivalent to using Scale=-1 on the first (z) axis. Both achieve the desired orientations of xyz, but have the problem of the z-axis displaying zmax to zmin.  
This is fixed by the second step which is setting Data Scale(Z) = -1 on the Axes Grid window.  
Awesome, thanks again 😃