Suggestion for Windows based plot tool

[Zeyneb]

Dear people,

I would like to evaluate some digital signal processing concepts on my PC. I don't like MatLab but I'm reasonable at C++. There is some library called FFTW to be able to generate frequency domain data from time domain data. I am writing these values to comma-separated values CSV files to be able to display them with a tool. I don't like the graphing facilities of Excel so I am looking for some (almost) free application to help me on this. I'm currently using SciDAVis. I've put an example of a plot in the attachment.

SciDAVis was able to do a cubic spline interpolation to represent an analog signal.

However I am looking for an even better tool which is able to read a engineering quantity from the CSV file and optimize the axis tick markers accordingly. As the tool knows it is time data. Values like 0.001s to 0.007s should be displayed as 1ms, 2ms, ... , 7ms.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a tool which is capable of doing so with CSV file import?

Best regards,
Zeyneb

[T3sl4co1l]

Have you looked at gnuplot?  I haven't, myself, but I've seen excellent results from it.

Tim

[Paul Price]

Present the .00x Sec data as x1000 to eliminate the leading zeros and dec. pt. and get Excel to format and re-label the axis as mSec

[DIPLover]

Have you looked at gnuplot?  I haven't, myself, but I've seen excellent results from it.

Tim

I've used gnuplot on OSX and was very satisfied (automated from Perl because I needed 192 graphs) but I hear it doesn't play too well with Windows. Was that just FUD?

[Fenichel]

  SigmaPlot is the standard in biomedical circles, but it's not cheap.

[Lukas]

but I hear it doesn't play too well with Windows. Was that just FUD?

Works just fine on windows. It associates .plt files with gnuplot, so after having written/generated the plot script, you can just double-click on it to see the graph.

[lgbeno]

iPython all the way.  Sometimes they call it Jupyter but it is amazingly matlab like yet free

[DIPLover]

but I hear it doesn't play too well with Windows. Was that just FUD?

Works just fine on windows. It associates .plt files with gnuplot, so after having written/generated the plot script, you can just double-click on it to see the graph.

Glad to hear that, will have to try it out!

[diyaudio]

Dear people,

I would like to evaluate some digital signal processing concepts on my PC. I don't like MatLab but I'm reasonable at C++. There is some library called FFTW to be able to generate frequency domain data from time domain data. I am writing these values to comma-separated values CSV files to be able to display them with a tool. I don't like the graphing facilities of Excel so I am looking for some (almost) free application to help me on this. I'm currently using SciDAVis. I've put an example of a plot in the attachment.

SciDAVis was able to do a cubic spline interpolation to represent an analog signal.

However I am looking for an even better tool which is able to read a engineering quantity from the CSV file and optimize the axis tick markers accordingly. As the tool knows it is time data. Values like 0.001s to 0.007s should be displayed as 1ms, 2ms, ... , 7ms.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a tool which is capable of doing so with CSV file import?

Best regards,
Zeyneb

Signal Processing, Dont like Matlab ? the latest Matlab 2014b has better quality plots. Have you tried Octave as an alternative. C++ means no toolbox which means room for bugs.
 

[janoc]

If you don't like Matlab (I feel your pain, the language is horrid ...) but want that sort of functionality, try Python with the Numpy/Scipy suite. The Matplotlib included with it is excellent and Numpy code often outperforms Matlab, sometimes by orders of magnitude.

If you don't want to fight with installing Python and all the Numpy/Scipy dependencies, Spyder is a good bundle and you get a "Matlabish" IDE as well:

https://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/

This is the link to Matplotlib (the library is included in the above):
http://matplotlib.org/

Spline interpolation example:
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/tutorial/interpolate.html

And a CSV loading (scroll down for Numpy example, which you will need for the plotting):
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/unpingco/Python-for-Signal-Processing/blob/master/Example_CSVs.ipynb

[gmb42]

A bit left field, but have you heard of R?  R Studio is quite a nice tool, R has packages to plot as well.

[Conrad Hoffman]

Like anything it has a learning curve, but I was very pleased with gnuplot on Windows 7.

[Kalvin]

+1 Numpy/Scipy

You may need to google a bit in order to get started.