  Optical integral-field spectroscopy was used to investigate the planetary
nebula NGC 3242. We analysed the main morphological components of this source,
including its knots, but not the halo. In addition to revealing the properties
ofthe physical and chemical nature of this nebula, we also provided reliable
spatially resolved constraints that can be used for future photoionisation
modelling of the nebula. The latter is ultimately necessary to obtain a fully
self-consistent 3D picture of the physical and chemical properties of the
object. The observations were obtained with the VIMOS instrument attached to
VLT-UT3. Maps and values for specific morphological zones for the detected
emission-lines were obtained and analysed with routines developed by the
authors to derive physical and chemical conditions of the ionised gas in a 2D
fashion. We obtained spatially resolved maps and mean values of the electron
densities, temperatures, and chemical abundances, for specific morphological
structures in NGC 3242. These results show the pixel-to-pixel variations of the
the small- and large-scale structures of the source. These diagnostic maps
provide information free from the biases introduced by traditional single
long-slit observations. In general, our results are consistent with a uniform
abundance distribution for the object, whether we look at abundance maps or
integrated fluxes from specified morphological structures. The results indicate
that special care should be taken with the calibration of the data and that
only data with extremely good signal-to-noise ratio and spectral coverage
should be used to ensure the detection of possible spatial variations.
