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Do you know how to make a 3D plot ?

S

SeRgIo_42

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 5, 2004
89
0
Hi.

I would appreciate any help on this matter.
I am planning to move from PC to Apple for a while but first
I have been looking for compatible/similar softwares that
I need at my work. There is only one missing at this point and
I have already checked versiontracker and similar sites for some light.
If you happen to know what can do the trick, I will
finally switch right away to a mac. :)

I need any software to plot XYZ or XYY data (XYY means
a series of XY data plotted in the same graph) as shown
in the attached picture (there is not need of colors).

I know that Gnuplot could be useful here but I wonder if
there is anything better than that.

Thank,

S.
 

Attachments

  • exemplo.gif
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I'm anything but a math genius, but might Grapher do what you're looking for? Or am I totally off?

From Apple's site:
Grapher — a graphing calculator with a 2D and 3D plotting tool and a rich equation editor that exports to many file formats (including QuickTime)
Click to expand...

Comes with Tiger in Utilities folder.

Edit: Grapher is actually Curvus Pro X, with a brushed metal UI. Apple bought it, and modified it a bit. You can see the old Curvus Pro X at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/math_science/curvusprox.html .
 
Thanks for your reply, screensaver400.

Those are nice programs indeed but they all require
the choose of a math function. This is how
they build those nice images. In my case, I actually have a bunch
of numbers in XY format (sometimes XYZ, with Z in the third column)

X Y
1. 5445.44
2. 4435.45
3. 4545.22
...
10000. 4553.45

that must be plotted. Hopefully, there is some alternative
somewhere in the mac world.

S.
 
Over Achiever said:
I've been able to plot coordinates in Excel to "build" a surface plot, I believe it's possible in Mathematica and Matlab as well. As for the specifics, it's been a while.
Click to expand...

If the original poster is a student then i would reccomend mathematica, maple or matlab because they are all around $100 for a student liscence. But if it is not for student use these apps are beetween $1000 and $3000 each so I dont think this is what he is looking for.
 
This forum is really amazing.
I thank you all for the posts (it is a nice
surprising after my commuting time).

Excel, Maple, Mathematica are all interesting options.
Yes, I can get an educationl discount so I am eligible
to a good deal in these softwares. Excel is ok but it
is not as powerful as specialized programs like the other two.
At least, not the version I used years ago :cool:
Maple and Mathematica are way over the top (I mean,
they certainly do these things but the learning curve
will be something else to consider). In the Windows world
there is a unbelievable program called Origin (from Originlab
and the one which I used to build the attached image).
There are some individual heroes porting Origin to linux boxes but
it is still in the beta versions.

I will look for the prices and new capabilities of the
aforementioned programs.

Thanks a lot for all help.
 
Tecplot is a superior plotting application and is available for Mac OS X too. The only issue there might be the cost for a license. If you are affiliated with a university, they may have a university-wide license.
 
Deltagraph might be worth looking at, too. It'll be easier to use than Mathematica or Matlab and more powerful than Excel. When I last used both, it didn't have the kind of power Origin did, but it looks like there have been a lot of new features since then. :)
 
This forum is really great.

Thanks for all messages. I have been checking them and
it is good to have options (even though, real user experiences
are the real safe way to go - just having nice interfaces
do not mean that the soft is actually good).

Deltagraph looks good but it is expensive. The academic
version costs something around 400 bucks.

Tecplot looks also amazing but there is not price on their webstore.
Checking the web I found some high number there.

IgoPRO is cheap. The webpage states that it is easy to use (of course).
I will look further into this option. Have you mastered this program, armadillo ?

Thanks a LOT for all help.

S.
 
Have you actually tried gnuplot?

It takes a bit of practice to make really pretty plots, but it's fairly easy to make a simple plot of your data.
 
Oh, Deltagraph costs US$ 180 ? This is much more reasonable.
Well, our IT does not have a licence for it. I am working at
Univ South Florida. Thanks a lot , mkrishnan !

ajwitte, I am sure that Gnuplot is able to provide something
similar but being an Origin user, there is no comparison.
You can easily accomplish relatively complex tasks in a couple of
minutes. Gnuplot requires extra programming knowledge that I do
not have now, therefore is not a real solution for me since my daily
tasks have deadlines involved (but I am learning how to use it.
I already installed the latest version on my old PC and I following
the tutorials). So, I am looking for the way that will not affect my
productivity during the migration to a mac.

Someone needs to create a 3D version of Xmgrace soon... :p

S.
 
SeRgIo_42 said:
Oh, Deltagraph costs US$ 180 ? This is much more reasonable.
Well, our IT does not have a licence for it. I am working at
Univ South Florida. Thanks a lot , mkrishnan !
Click to expand...

I'm at UF in Gainesville. :) I volunteer with a lot of USF'ers. Our IT department is pretty good about licensing, but I'm miffed that we do not have site licenses that extend to home use here for Office and other MS products -- at Univ of Michigan, and at Wayne State University, one could buy MS Office for $60-70 as part of the site license.

Our statistics and data viz stuff is pretty dicey too. We have SAS and SPSS, but we don't have LISREL, even though many people in our department use it extensively. Supposedly this is being addressed. :rolleyes:
 
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