Scientific Computing FAQ: Plotting, Graphics and Scientific Visualization

Plotting, Graphics and Scientific Visualization

This is a huge field. Rather than attempt to review it, I've simply noted a few resources.

Software for Plotting, Graphics and Sci Vis

Web Sites on Graphics and Sci Vis

W3Kit is an object-oriented toolkit for building interactive World Wide Web applications, by Paul Burchard at the The Geometry Center. Examples of it's use are at the Interactive Gallery.

A variety of sci vis software is at LLNL.

Edward Tufte wrote a number of good texts on sci vis.

Advanced Visualization Laboratory at UIUC

S. Baum: Software for Graphics and Data Analysis (1998)

For more general graphics questions, less related to scientific visualization: See the several FAQs relating to computer graphics at faqs.org. An overview of computer graphics is at LS VII Computer Graphics on the Net in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Dortmund.

Software for Plotting, Graphics and Sci Vis

One of the most common free software package is gnuplot.

Another common one is the GNU plotutils.

Another excellent package is Dan Kelley's GRI

jsplot is a mixture of a technical plotting tool and a simple drawing and presentation graphics program. It runs on UNIX using X11/Motif and on Windows.

Grace is a WYSIWYG 2D plotting tool for the X Window System and M*tif. Grace runs on practically any version of Unix. As well, it has been successfully ported to VMS, OS/2 and Win9*/NT (some minor functionality may be missing, though).

The PGPLOT Graphics Subroutine Library is a Fortran- or C-callable, device-independent graphics package for making simple scientific graphs. It is intended for making graphical images of publication quality with minimum effort on the part of the user. For most applications, the program can be device-independent, and the output can be directed to the appropriate device at run time.

The PGPLOT library consists of two major parts: a device-independent part and a set of device-dependent ``device handler'' subroutines for output on various terminals, image displays, dot-matrix printers, laser printers, and pen plotters. Common file formats supported include PostScript and GIF.

PGPLOT itself is written mostly in standard Fortran-77, with a few non-standard, system-dependent subroutines. PGPLOT subroutines can be called directly from a Fortran-77 or Fortran-90 program. A C binding library (cpgplot) and header file (cpgplot.h) are provided that allow PGPLOT to be called from a C or C++ program; the binding library handles conversion between C and Fortran argument-passing conventions.

PGPLOT has been tested with UNIX (most varieties, including Linux, SunOS, Solaris, HPUX, AIX, and Irix) and OpenVMS operating systems. I am unable to provide support for DOS, Windows, Windows/NT, or MacOS, but I do distribute code provided by users for use with these operating systems.

CViz is a visualization tool designed for analyzing high-dimensional data in large, complex data sets. This tool is very useful for analysts who often use statistical methods.

Bill Hibbard's VisAD is a Java component library for interactive and collaborative visualization and analysis of numerical data. The name VisAD is an acronym for "Visualization for Algorithm Development".