Book Image

gnuplot Cookbook

By : Lee Phillips
Book Image

gnuplot Cookbook

By: Lee Phillips

Overview of this book

gnuplot is the world's finest technical plotting software, used by scientists, engineers, and others for many years. It is in constant development and runs on practically every operating system, and can produce output in almost any format. The quality of its 3d plots is unmatched and its ability to be incorporated into computer programs and document preparation systems is excellent. gnuplot Cookbook ñ it will help you master gnuplot. Start using gnuplot immediately to solve your problems in data analysis and presentation. Quickly find a visual example of the graph you want to make and see a complete, working script for producing it. Learn how to use the new features in gnuplot 4.4. Find clearly explained, working examples of using gnuplot with LaTeX and with your own computer programming language. You will master all the ins and outs of gnuplot through gnuplot Cookbook. You will learn to plot basic 2d to complex 3d plots, annotate from simple labels to equations, integrate from simple scripts to full documents and computer progams. You will be taught to annotate graphs with equations and symbols that match the style of the rest of your text, thus creating a seamless, professional document. You will be guided to create a web page with an interactive graph, and add graphical output to your simulation or numerical analysis program. Start using all of gnuplot's simple to complex features to suit your needs, without studying its 200 page manual through this Cookbook.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
gnuplot Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Finding Help and Information
Index

Using coordinate mappings


It is possible, when making 3D plots from data files, for the data to be interpreted in spherical or cylindrical coordinates rather than the default Cartesian system. For details, type help set mapping. We will give an example of using the cylindrical mapping to conveniently draw a shape with cylindrical symmetry.

The previous figure is a perspective view of a surface that somewhat resembles a Christmas tree ornament. The relevant feature of this surface is that it has rotational symmetry around the z (vertical) axis, which means that it is most naturally expressed in cylindrical coordinates.

How to do it…

Try the following script:

set mapping cylindrical
unset tics
unset border
set hidden
set xrange [-pi : pi]
set yrange [-pi : pi]
set zrange [0 : pi]
set iso 60
unset key
splot '++' using 1:2:(sin($2)) with lines

How it works…

There are several new ideas used in this recipe. Breaking it down, these are:

The set mapping command

The first, highlighted line contains the...