GNUPlot – Free 2D/3D Plotting Software

We’ve featured a free plotting software – SciDAVis recently, SciDAVis is straightforward and easy to use, it has no learning curve. GNUPlot is another free and open source scientific plotting software developed for scientists and pupils, it’s a command line based program, and will take you some time to learn, but it allows to draw more complicated graphs such as Bezier splines, vector fields, non-gridded data, etc.

Suppose that you wish to draw a two-dimensional or three-dimensional graph to present a specific formula or market analysis data, there are many choices available:

• Use a 3D modeling software such as 3DS Max, Maya, LightWave 3D, Softimage to model objects.
• Use an image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, Corel PaintShop Photo Pro, Ulead PhotoImpact to paint images.
• Use a vector graphics software like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW to draw graphics.
• Alternatively, if you are a software developer, you can use a computer language such as C/C++, Java, Objective C, pascal, python, C# together with a graphics library like OpenGL or DirectX to render your own 3D scene freely.
• Use an engineering analysis software like MATLAB to plot the graph.

The first 4 options will consume much time and effort, the last option is effective but not free, GNUPlot is a free alternative to MATLAB in the field of 2D/3D Plotting.

Features

• Allows to render 2D/3D data points/functions in many styles: lines, points, dots, impulses, error bars, boxes, candlesticks, finance bars, etc.
• It could plot a large number of different types of diagrams for you: simple functions, B-splines, Bezier splines, histograms, filled curves, candlesticks, parametric functions, vector fields, approximation, 3D surfaces, 3D singularities, 3D mapping, non-gridded data, 2D and 3D heat maps, images, texts, etc.
• Allows to zoom in/out, rotate, scale the plot.
• 3 rendering methods available: no antialiasing, antialiasing, antialiasing and oversampling.
• Allows to copy the graph to clipboard or render to external file directly.
• Supports complex number.
• Allows to perform algebraic computation and print out the result.
• Supports user-defined functions.
• Allows to animate graph.
• Allows to plot self-defined graphs.
• And many more…

GNUPlot supports all 32 bit Windows including Windows 7/Windows XP, and Mac OS X, Linux.

GNUPlot is a 9.9MB download available from SourceForge.net.