3-d plotting packages

[Ruth Milner]

As promised, here's a summary of the responses to my query about 3-D
plotting software for Suns. I would like to thank everyone who took the
time to reply; since there were in most cases more than one person who
described a given package, I won't list your names here, but I am grateful
for your help.

Humble apologies for the delay; I took a while processing everything, and
then thought I'd posted it when it appears I hadn't :-).

The packages, basically, are as follows:

1. PLOT79 - a popular package from the University of Utah, available to
   other Universities on tape for US$750. It has support for many devices,
   including PostScript and Tektronix, and most likely imPRESS (Imagen) as
   well. I have not seen it, but I am told it produces publication-quality 
   plots. For more information, contact Nelson Beebe, Center for Scientific
   Computing, South Physics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City UT 84112,
   beebe at science.utah.edu .

2. NCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research. This group has written
   and maintains a comprehensive plotting package, including excellent 3-D
   support. Price to Universities is US$500 for a site licence. They have a 
   UNIX version, a VMS version, and a generic version. Support exists for 
   Tektronix, Imagen, and PostScript, among others. This also produces 
   publication-quality output. For information, contact Adrianne Link, 
   adrianne at bierstadt.ucar.edu .

3. Plot3d - part of CRC plot, a public-domain package from Purdue, available 
   via anonymous ftp from j.cc.purdue.edu . This does support 3-D but may
   not meet the needs of those with more complex requirements. Free, though.

4. Imagetool, from NCSA. Also available by anonymous ftp from 
   zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu . This is a simple package with some 3-D support,
   but will not do polar co-ordinates or odd labelling.

5. 3dgraph, written here at U of Toronto by Tony Plate in Computer Science.
   Another freebie, it is essentially a 3-D version of graph. Tony uses it
   mostly for surfaces, and the axis marking facilities are limited. If
   anyone wants this, let me know. I do not have anonymous ftp set up on my
   machines. If there is too much demand for me to handle, I will send the
   shar file to wnl. Tony tells me that it displays in the xterm Tektronix
   window, and will produce PostScript output (although Imagens with PS
   emulation run out of resources for all but the smallest graphs).

6. Mathematica, although primarily a symbolic algebra package, does have
   plotting support, including 3-D. Cost to Universities is US$950. I'm
   afraid I don't have ordering information yet, although since the program is
   available for Macs and comes with the NeXT, it shouldn't be too difficult
   to find out.

7. IRAF - Image Reduction Astronomical Facility, from the National Optical
   Astronomy Observatories. Supported by Kitt Peak. I hesitate to lump this
   in with plotting packages, because although it does do some 3-D plotting,
   it is really intended for image processing and is a huge package. One
   of the Suns here, and our VAXes, are running it, and it takes up about
   40 MB of disk space. Unless you need all the other facilities, this is
   probably not the best program for you.

8. DISSPLA - A commercial package from Computer Associates, 10505 Sorrento
   Valley Rd., San Diego CA 92121. It has excellent support for 3D, lots of
   bells and whistles, but may be too expensive at least for small university
   sites anyway.  I was not quoted a price on this, but I expect it will be 
   several thousand dollars, which will put it out of our range. At any rate, 
   the correct prices will be available from the company directly if anyone's 
   interested.

I have decided to get the NCAR package for our systems, for three basic
reasons: 1. it produces quite good plots (some examples were sent to me by
Adrianne Link), 2. it's very reasonably priced, at least to universities, and 
3. it's quite widely used on many other systems, including VMS, from which
most of our users are currently migrating. 

Hope this is useful for others.

Ruth Milner
Systems Manager
University of Toronto Physics

sysruth at utorphys (BITNET)     sysruth at helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Internet)