Maple Plotting Guide
Introduction
2-D Plots
3-D Plots
Specialized Plots
Statistical and Financial Plots
Dynamic Systems
Text
Plot Options
Interactive Plotting
Combining Plots
Animating Plots
Transforming Plots
Exporting Plots
See Also
Maple provides many varied forms of plots for you to use. This guide is designed to help you find the correct plot, and find the information you need to quickly and easily visualize your function, expression, or data.
More Information
2-D Line Plots
3-D Line and Point Plots
2-D Filled Plots
3-D Filled Plots
2-D Vector and Grid Plots
3-D Vector and Grid Plots
2-D Point Plots
3-D Mathematical Concepts Calculated
Bar Plots
2-D Mathematical Concepts Calculated
Click on the name or picture of each plot to see the corresponding Maple help page. The commands to create the plots are in the examples section of each help page.
Apply a gradient color scheme
Compare plots
Complex plot
Cumulative sum chart
Draw geometric object
Draw graph or network
Dual axis plot
Frequency plot
Infinity plot
Line chart
Logarithmic plot
Parametric plot
Plot
Plot a discontinuous function
Plot implicit function
Plot in different coordinate system
Plot kernel density
Plot list of values
Plot real curve
Plot straight line
Polar plot
Top of page
Area chart
Contour plot
Density plot
Pie chart
Plot inequality
Plot polygon
polygonbyname
Shade the area between two curves
Venn diagram
Violin plot
Voronoi Diagram
Conformal plot
Plot direction field
Plot field
Plot gradient field
Plot spatial curve
Plot vector
Plot vector field
Show coordinate system
Space curve
Agglomerated plot
Bubble plot
Color points by associated values
Plot quantile
Plot sparse matrix
Point Plot
Scatter plot
Sunflower plot
Symmetry plot
Bar chart
Box plot
Column graph
Error plot
Histogram
Pareto
FlowLine
Flux
Function chart
Line Integral
Mean value theorem
Newton's method
Path of a stochastic process
Plot Antiderivative
Plot branches
Plot DE solution cases
Plot Derivative
Plot eigenvectors
Plot function composition
Plot least squares fit
Plot linear system
Plot linear transform
Plot Newton polygon
Plot phase portrait
Plot projection
Plot Riemann sum
Plot secant line
Plot solution of ODE
Plot Taylor Approximation
Plot vector sum
Plot y=x reflection
Poincare surface of section
Point interpolation
Probability plot
Process control chart
Profile of likelihood
Rolle's theorem
Root locus plot
Tree plot
Wavelet plot
Plot 3-D point
Plot knot
3-D Plot
Apply gradient color scheme to surface
Color surface by associated values
Color surface by coordinate values
Implicit plot
Plot intersection
Plot matrix values
Plot polyhedra
Plot tube
Shade the volume between two surfaces
Surface plot of data
3-D Plot in different coordinate system
Plot surface
Show 3-D coordinate system
Directional derivative
Flow line
Gradient
Lagrange multipliers
Normal
Plot cross product
Plot cross section
Plot DE solution
Plot ODE solution
Plot PDE solution
Plot surface/volume of revolution
Plot Taylor approximation
Radius of curvature
Tangent vector
TNB frame
Vector-defined plane
Cayley Graph
Cayley Table
Commuting Graph
Compare plots in an Array
Display data on a world map
Display different world map projections
Draw Graph
Draw graph automorphisms
Draw Subgroup Lattice
LSPeriodogram
Periodogram
Plot Polyhedral Set
Pressure-enthalpy Diagram
Psychrometric Chart
SignalPlot
Spectrogram
Temperature-Entropy Chart
3-D Agglomerated plot
3-D Area chart
Biplot
Correlogram
Data plot
Heat map
Plot point
Scatter plot 3-D
Scree plot
Seasonal subseries plot
Time series plot
Tree map
Weibull plot
Bode plot
Nichols Plot
Nyquist plot
Plot discrete points
Plot impulse response
Plot magnitude
Plot phase
Plot response
Plot response in 3-D
Plot zeros and poles
Root-contour plot
Root-locus plot
3-D Text plot
Text plot
There are many options that can be applied to the plot command, and other plots accept most of those options. They include grid display options (gridlines, axes, captions, and more), plot generation options (adaptive point sampling and discontinuity detection), and plot display options (colors, line and fill styles, transparency, etc). See plot options for a complete list. Each plot page indicates which of the options it accepts.
Most of the options that can be applied to a plot command can also be applied interactively to an existing plot, by using the plot context menus.
The plottools package provides commands to generate basic graphical objects and alter existing plot structures. Objects include geometric shapes, arrows, and points, and can be displayed either in existing plots or on separate axes. Transformations involve rotation, translation, and scaling of any type of plot. Also available is textplot, for adding text or 2-D math to an existing plot (or textplot3d for 3-D plots). You can also add text, 2-D math, various shapes, or free form drawing to a 2-D plot using a set of drawing tools.
Typesetting for 3-D plots provides the ability to use typeset mathematics and text in titles, captions, axis labels and text objects, as well as the ability to edit them in place. For more information, see the plot/typesetting help page.
The plot and plot3d commands have been updated to recognize units in the function and range arguments, for both the expression-form and operator-form of the calling sequences. More information about this feature is available on the plot/units help page.
You can set most plot options for an entire Maple session, using the setoptions command. The options apply only to the worksheet in which they are set, until either it is closed, or restart is called.
Many plots can be generated using the interactive Plot Builder. It is an interface with easy-to-use input fields and drop-down menus, allowing you to specify the options available for the plot you choose. When you use the Plot Builder on an expression to be plotted, it provides a choice of plot types which are compatible with that expression. Controls for plot options are grouped together by relevance and change dynamically in the panel.
For detailed instructions on using the plot builder interface, see Using the Interactive Plot Builder. For performing many tasks with plots, see the links on the plotting overview page.
The interactiveparams command can be useful for quickly viewing changes to certain variables in an expression. The expression can be manipulated and the plot previewed with a Maplet, then output as either a plot or a plotting command.
You can use the display command to display multiple plots on the same axes. This command accepts multiple plots of different structures, as long as they are all of the same dimension, and allows any of the plot options to be defined for all of the plots being displayed. Alternately, you can enter an array of plots into the display command, and plots can be displayed side-by-side. This command can also be used to animate one or more plots.
With most of the commands above, you can enter a set of functions or expressions in place of a single function or expression. Alternately, you can use the multiple command. These methods display multiple plots on the same axes, but they are all of the same type.
An easy way to add functions or expressions to an existing plot is to select and drag the input or output of an expression or function definition onto the plot. The settings that are applied to the original plot are also applied to the new function, but if you use default settings, the grid automatically adjusts to display all expressions fully. See drag and drop for details.
The Plot Builder also builds plots of multiple expressions, providing an easy way to modify the options on individual plots or global options.
Many of the plots above can be animated on a parameter, which is defined when the animate command is called. This provides a method for examining the effects of a single parameter on the plot. The same command can be used to show a curve traced in time. See the display help page for instructions on how to animate several plots and display an animation with a background plot.
The viewpoint animation option allows you to create a "fly-through" animation by varying the viewpoint through a 3-D plot. In a fly-through animation, the camera that projects the 3-D plot moves in all directions above, below, and around the plot surface, as if the camera were flying through the plot. For more information, see the plot3d/viewpoint help page.
Maple provides many methods for altering existing plots. The easiest method is to use the plot context menus. There, you can change many of the plot options that can be specified when first generating the plot by using an interface that allows you to enter only the options accepted by that plot. See plotinterface for more details on manipulating both two-dimensional and three-dimensional plots.
You can also specify modifications and transformations to plot structures and objects using plottools. For instance, to exchange the coordinate axes of a plot or to apply a custom mapping to a plot, use plottools[transform].
The default method of output for all plots is to display the plot inline within the Maple Worksheet. However, you can specify the output as a jpeg, gif, or postscript file, a Maplet, a new Maple Worksheet, or one of several other formats. To set the output method in a worksheet, use the plotsetup command.
You can also export a plot from the worksheet once it has been drawn, by using the plot context menus. See export a plot for more information.
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