Hi

I think Matlab too

Dear Ali Akbar,

MATLAB plot tools are very clever and simples to use. I worked very much with them and my students too.

OriginPro (from OriginLabs) is the ultimate plotting tool. You should try it.

Thanks for the quick and fruitful replies you posted.

Meanwhile, I wanted to know how to draw 3 way graphs such as the one attached.

Thanks

TECPLOT, ORIGIN Pro are plotting softwares and plots generated in them are very good. Also in linux GNUPLOT is also a good plotting medium along with TECPLOT 360.MATLAB is not a plotting software but you can plot in matlab with no problems.

Plotting three axes in MATLAB is little tough but it is quite easy in TECPLOT. Follow the steps given below:

1) Make a data file having the data values as x y1 y2 y3.

2) Goto Tecplot -goto file menu-select 'load data file'-select the data file from your PC.

3) Now you will get a graph for x y1.

4)Goto Mapping style.-Activate all the maps-select the axis for each data column under the column in the mapping style named as Which y axis.

5) Now you will get the third axes along with the required graphs. Assign the names and ranges for the axes.

I think that the easiest way to plot something like what you have presented in MATLAB would be to use 'contour' function with specific properties.

http://www.mathworks.fr/fr/help/matlab/contour-plots-1.html

Python's matplotlib is very good. 

http://matplotlib.org/gallery.html

Damon McDougall Wrote a good tutorial. 

Publication-ready the first time: Beautiful, reproducible plots with Matplotlib

http://damon-is-a-geek.com/publication-ready-the-first-time-beautiful-reproducible-plots-with-matplotlib.html

For contour, Please see following links

http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/contour_demo.html

http://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/contour_image.html 

While it is nice to have a gnuplot or Matlab skript to generate a plot from a data set, I usually do "post-production" on the eps- or pdf-output in a vector-graphic program like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. You can usually identify by style or color your line-plot and change it more thoroughly in an vector-graphic editor. Also nice to format the labels on axes to your desire.

For making publication ready plots, I also recommend python with Matplotlib, as Yi Zhang proposed.

Personally, I think it makes even better plots than Matlab. It is my favorite for repetitive datasets, like spectral data, or timelines etc. You write a script once, and just adapt it for new data types.

If you want to create a single image, than Origin and its clones (e.g QtiPlot) are in most cases way faster, since you don't have to write a complete script.However, with those it can be challenging to get two similar looking images from different data sets regarding text positions and such alike (e.g for a publication).

Short answer is Python - Matplotlib

In case you are looking to make publication quality graphs, take a look at my article

https://vijaikumar.in/how-to-make-publication-quality-plots-using-python-86bb1c6dabf7

Long answer follows :

I suggest you to look no further and look into Matplotlib (2d plots), Prettyplotlib (prettier plots similar to matplotlib but produces very good quality presentation ready plots), chaco (for building plot embedded applications) or Mayavi (3d plotting). Don't use commercial junks like Tecplot. Paraview is very advanced and good replacement for tecplot but takes some time to get a hang of it. Visit is also good.

All the above packages are opensource packages. While the first four are python libraries... The last two are packages like tecplot itself but opensource.

If you need help in getting started, ping me i will happy to help you with started python scripts... :)

http://matplotlib.org/

http://olgabot.github.io/prettyplotlib/

http://code.enthought.com/chaco/

http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi/

http://www.paraview.org/

https://wci.llnl.gov/simulation/computer-codes/visit/

I guess R would be a quite handy and porwerful tool for you to draw many types of plot

Especially, ggplot2 library implemented in R is implementation of the Grammar of Graphics by Leland Wilkinson

This is the simple course for learning how to use it https://www.coursera.org/course/exdata

or you can search some solutions answered in stack overflow

Let me introduce some useful books

- ggplot2, Hadley Wickham

- R graphics Cookbook, Winston Chang

gnuplot or matplotlib

The best is MATLAB. You can draw any kind of plot with simple coding in m file. If you use 2014 version then you can use apps which are buili-in in latest version.

Also, besides MATLAB, R graphics, matplotlib are good one softwares.

There were several suggestions here and I agree with the ones that said matplotlib and mayavi (altought mayavi could be better for my point of view). They're free with a lot of documentation (matplolib at least) and with a big community. I've started using it years ago for software development, statistical analysis, presentation, etc. and I'm quite happy with the results. And I'm one of those guys who feels plot aesthetics is actually important. Matplotlib is extremely flexible if you take the time to learn the library (it's a python library). Personally I think a good plot in matplotlib exceeds considerably the quality of a good plot in Matlab. Excel is in a far lower league and I wouldn't ever consider it. I've never used Tecplot so I can't really compare with previous packages.

Hi

I think Matlab too

I agree with Mr Kumar, use an opensource as a first option. Because, python matplotlib for 2D and sometimes for 3D give your so many facilities similar than the plot options in matlab, you can use also gnuplot too, which is focused on graphs with a big data. However, if you use matlab in your calculations the best option is use the same program. 

During the last year, from start of this question, I have tried many software for my research plots. Each has some good and weak points. However, based on my experience OriginPro is the best among the others. It has excellent capabilities to create any kind of plots. It can also import data from Matlab directly.

I think TECPLOT (www.tecplot.com) is a good option. This program has many options for 2D and 3D (transient animated also) full-color visualization. Also has filters and post-processing calculations for input quantities.

On my opinion 'Origin' is one of the best software for plotting graphs :)

Tecplot has many interesting features.

Tecplot

gnu plot is the best. free and open source.

Matlab is better.

Any one from Matplotlib or GNU, both are freely available and opensource.

GNUPLOT is definitely the choice. With a little creativity, u will be able to handle big data and plot any type of graph.