Windows plotting packages

From: "Kevin C. Stewart" <kcs2c &$at$& uva.pcmail.virginia.edu>
Subject: Windows plotting packages
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 94 16:50:52 EST

 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