Graphing Program Question

General Discussion
1

For the graphics savvy people out there,

I need a program that will graph/plot a set of points full size and to scale. I use the points for my rail bands and outlines, and in excel, they look like this (data in cm):

Unfortunately, I am unable to print them full size (9 feet long). I have all of the data points already. What would be a good program to use to be able to print them out either at home or on a large format printer? It would be nice if I could just type the points in, but while I’m wishing, I also want a pony.

A print of all the points would make layout much faster for me, as I currently measure them all out with a ruler, and it takes me forever to do… With a print, I could just poke a pencil through the paper at all the points right onto the blank.

Thanks,

JSS

2

why don’t you take the time to create teamplates of the 5 outlines u’ve got there? That way u can just trace the template onto the blank like everyone else does…i guess

3

Adobe Illustrator is pretty damn good

Attached a screen shot - you can plot points X, Y also control dimensions…

Also has a graph making thingamajig - never thought about using it for this kind of thing - I’ll have a quick play…yuk, not fun

This is how I’d do it…

Draw a box that represents one half of the board…maybe turn this into a locked guide

Drag your ruler to the bottom left hand corner to establish your x/y axis

Then you can plot points by creating a small circle say 1x1mm and the x/y or measuring distance controls at the top (attach pic 7)

Once you have your points plotted you can draw in the curve

Save as a pdf and print out at full scale on your plotter.

Alternatively you could start with your curve and use the same kind of process to check some areas

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4

Thanks Squid!

That is exactly the type of thing I was looking for…

JSS

5

Adobe Illustrator is your first choice, but Corel Draw works well too. You can find older versions of Corel Draw version 5 and 7 very cheap.also, maybe check ebay.

6

If you don’t want to spend any money then check out Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org). It’s an opensource imitation of Illustrator. It is no where nearly as good, but might solve your problem.