simple graph drawing software needed

I need some software for drawing basic graphs on a pc. Needs to do linear, and log-log. I want to be able to enter data points manually or from a mathematical formula. I don't need fancy features and lots of bells and whistles. Hopefully, it's free or nearly so.

Thanks

M

Excel will draw graphs of groups data points. I'm sure OpenOffice does similarly.

--
  Keith

Some good key words for Google: mathematics graphing software freeware

For instance:

gnuplot, coupled with octave.

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Regards,
  Bob Monsen

I can't afford Excel, and Im not sure it does log-log or even semi-log.

Tell me about 'OpenOffice' though. WHat is it and where can I get it?

Thanks,

M

I convinced it to do semi-log before I posted earlier. I'm not sure about log-log, but It's worth some playtime.

It's free. What else do you need? ;-)

-- Keith

There's gnuplot.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident

Get a cheap secondhand beige-coloured Mac (G3 or lower), which should come with a free copy of Claris Works. Although intended as an office package, that will do everything you need and includes useful serial port comms too.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

Keith Williams a écrit :

Hello. Just use Excel's math functions to create new series in log scale (or not) and plot these. Excel might not be the simplest software for your needs, but it shure does a lot of things. Somewhat simpler to use : GNU Plot (free) or Origin (relatively expensive) Peter

Ooookay. And that's better than downloading some free software in what way?

Mike

P.S. Any relation to Peter?

gnuplot

robert

It's a full-blown free office suite developed by Sun that runs on Windows, Linux, and lots of other Unices. It exports and imports MS Office formats (and a lot of others). It's own "native" data format is essentially gzipped XML, and of course is exchangeable between different platforms.

It's quite a bit slower than MS Office (probably because of the somewhat braindead XML/Java base), but that doesn't matter with today's hardware.

robert

...except the OP specifically stated that he can't afford Excel. But Openoffcice's "calc" module is pretty compatible.

robert

It's better if the questioner happened to have easy access to an older Mac (or was already using one but hadn't made that clear) and hadn't yet realised the strength and range of the software that comes bundled with them.

It might also be useful as an alternative approach if, for any reason, the other suggestions don't give satisfactory results.

I didn't offer it as the unequivocal 'best' solution - but it is a valid approach that hadn't yet been mentioned and I do know it will work.

Not that I'm aware of.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

Have you read this page?

If it's got .c files and a "lot of" READMEs, then it's source, and probably useless if all you have is XP with no c compiler.

You should download gp400win32.zip . I found a copy at ftp://ftp.gnuplot.info/pub/gnuplot/gp400win32.zip .

It has wgnuplot.exe, which would be the executable, and wgnuplot.hlp, which would be the help file.

When you unzip it, it should create its own dir. structure under [where the zip is]\\gnuplot, then just cd to gnuplot\\bin and give it a shot. :-) Well, read the READMEs first. They're ordinary text files - you can open them with NOTEPAD.exe .

--
Cheers!
Rich

OK, thanks all.

I got open office and can't figure out how to get started. There's a lot of stuff in there. How do I get started with openoffice?

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Had no luck with gnuplot. I finally figured out where to download it and got a 2 mb gzip file. I opened the archive and it has many files in it, including alot that had 'readme' filenames. But, none of them would open in windows(XP). So, I have the zip file on my desktop, but have no idea how to proceed. I see some of the file extensions are .c. Is this supposed to be a source file that you have to compile???

Regards

M

Thanks Rich, that was easy.....

Almost all of the chatter there was about compiling, I really never happened to stumble upon the executable link and was wondering if it was for real:>:

Regards

M

Hey, now I'm cooking! Got gnuplot, don't even understand half the terms in the help file though:>: Math was never my strength.

But, it runs and I can cut and paste examples from the examples help page and it plots them.

I'm trying to plot y=ax^b, for all values of x between 1200 and 200 with b=7.64 and a=1.170, with at least 100 data points. Do I have to tell it to plot this on a log-log scale or is this done automatically because I used x^b in the formula?

What's the complete command for this???? I'm looking for a mailing list for gnuplot, it seems like a very nice program.

Thanks,

M

Here's an example that runs under gnuplot 3.7.1. It's the inductive/capacitive reactance plot vs. frequency that's in The Art of Electronics/Terman/ARRL Handbook. In other words, a log/log plot of 1/2*pi*f*c and 2*pi*f*l. I'll be damned if I can remember what all this stuff does besides spit out a page of postscript. Basically, I went down the list of commands and put them all in and adjusted them until it looked good.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident

set terminal postscript landscape monochrome "Helvetica" 14 set output 'react.ps' set title "reactance vs. frequency" 0,0 set noclip points set clip one set noclip two set border set boxwidth set dummy x,y set format x "%6.3g" set format y "%g" set format z "%g" set grid set nokey set nolabel set noarrow set nologscale set logscale x 10 set logscale y 10 set offsets 0, 0, 0, 0 set nopolar set angles radians set noparametric set view 60, 30, 1, 1 set samples 100, 100 set isosamples 10, 10 set surface set nocontour set clabel set nohidden3d set cntrparam order 4 set cntrparam linear set cntrparam levels auto 5 set cntrparam points 5 set size 1,1 set data style points set function style lines set xzeroaxis set yzeroaxis set tics in set ticslevel 0.5 set ytics (1,2,3,5,7,10,20,30,50,70,100,200,300,500,700,\\

1000,2000,3000,5000,7000,\\ 10000,20000,30000,50000,70000,100000) set xtics (100,"" 200,300,"" 500,"" 700,\\ 1000,"" 2000,3000,"" 5000,"" 7000,\\ 10000,"" 20000,30000,"" 50000,"" 70000,\\ 100e3,"" 200e3,300e3,"" 500e3,"" 700e3,\\ 1e6,"" 2e6,3e6,"" 5e6,"" 7e6,\\ 10e6,"" 20e6,30e6,"" 50e6,"" 70e6,100e6) set ztics set notime set rrange [-0 : 10] set trange [-5 : 5] set urange [-5 : 5] set vrange [-5 : 5] set xlabel "Hertz" 0,0 set xrange [100 : 1e+08] set ylabel "Ohms" 0,0 set yrange [1 : 100000] set zlabel "" 0,0 set zrange [-10 : 10] set autoscale r set autoscale t set noautoscale set autoscale z set zero 1e-08 set label "10H" at 200,30000 set label "100mH" at 1500,3000 set label "1mH" at 20000,300 set label "10uH" at 200000,30 set label ".1uH" at 2000000,3 set label "1H" at 600,8000 set label "10mH" at 5000,1000 set label "100uH" at 50000,100 set label "1uH" at 600000,8 set label "100uF" at 2e2,4 set label "1uF" at 2e3,40 set label "10nF" at 2e4,400 set label "100pF" at 2e5,4e3 set label "1pF" at 2e6,4e4 set label "10uF" at 6e2,13 set label "100nF" at 6e3,130 set label "1nF" at 6e4,1.3e3 set label "10pF" at 6e5,1.3e4 xl(x,l) = 2*pi*x*l xc(x,c) = 1/(2*pi*x*c) plot \\ xl(x,5) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,.5) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,.05) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,5e-3) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,5e-4) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,5e-5) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,5e-6) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,5e-7) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,5e-8) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,50e-6) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,5e-6) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,.5e-6) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,50e-9) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,5e-9) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,.5e-9) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,50e-12) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,5e-12) not w l 2,\\ xc(x,.5e-12) not w l 2,\\ xl(x,10) w l 1,\\ xl(x,1) w l 1,\\ xl(x,.1) w l 1,\\ xl(x,.01) w l 1,\\ xl(x,.001) w l 1,\\ xl(x,1e-4) w l 1,\\ xl(x,1e-5) w l 1,\\ xl(x,1e-6) w l 1,\\ xl(x,1e-7) w l 1,\\ xc(x,100e-6) w l 1,\\ xc(x,10e-6) w l 1,\\ xc(x,1e-6) w l 1,\\ xc(x,100e-9) w l 1,\\ xc(x,10e-9) w l 1,\\ xc(x,1e-9) w l 1,\\ xc(x,100e-12) w l 1,\\ xc(x,10e-12) w l 1,\\ xc(x,1e-12) w l 1