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From: "Kevin C. Stewart" <kcs2c |-at-| uva.pcmail.virginia.edu>
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 94 16:50:52 EST
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To: CHEMISTRY: at :ccl.net
Subject: Windows plotting packages


Sorry about posting to the whole CCL, I deleted the original poster.

     Our group uses both Jandel's SigmaPlot for Windows and 3-D Vision's
Stanford Graphics Version 2.1.  In an unscientific test on a 33 MHz 486 w/
8Meg running windows 3.11 and Novell 3.11 Netware (programs and data on
network server) using a 4 column 2500 line ASCII data file it took:

                    Time to load file        Graph refresh time
SigmaPlot           ~30 sec                        ~6 sec      
Stanford            ~50 sec                        ~2 sec

     The largest files anyone uses here are ~15000  points.  There have been
complaints about the useability of both programs.

     IMHO, I think that the limiting performance factor for plotting large
data files under windows is RAM, performance plummets when Windows uses the
disk as virtual memory. My experience is that programs which are unusable
with 4 Megs are acceptable with 8 Megs and really nice with 16 Meg. (Designer
4.0, SigmaPlot, Stanford Graphics)
Kevin Charles Stewart     
Graduate Research Assistant

University of Virginia
Department of Materials Science
Thornton Hall
Charlottesville, VA 22903
 
e-mail:  kcs2c- at -virginia.edu 
phone:   (804) 982-5790