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Technical Writers
| Do you produce graphs for publication in technical articles or journals? If so, DPlot is the tool you need to get the job done.
You have complete control over output resolution, fonts, line widths, colors, the physical size of the plot, and most any graph parameter you
can imagine. |
Bitmap export
In this context "bitmap" refers to BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, and/or TIFF image files. DPlot supports export to all of these formats. When you
elect to save a graph to one of these formats, you will be presented with the dialog box shown on the right. The output dimensions are controlled
by the width, height, and resolution settings. If all 3 values are set to 0 then the resulting image will essentially be
a screenshot. If resolution is non-zero, then all graph attributes as they appear on the display will be scaled by
resolution/(display resolution), so that the graph will have the same proportions in the saved image as on your display monitor.
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PDF output
Though DPlot does not directly support output of the PDF format, you can "print" to a PDF file using
Adobe® Acrobat or any other Adobe product that includes Acrobat Distiller
or the Adobe PDF virtual printer driver. If you have Acrobat installed you should see Acrobat Distiller and/or Adobe PDF
as one of the possible choices of printer in DPlot's Print dialog.
If you do not have access to one of those Adobe® products, there are several low-cost PDF virtual
printer drivers available on the internet. For more information on PDF output see the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).
This example PDF file was created with one of the PDF virtual printer drivers described
in the FAQ.
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Extents, intervals, size
You can control the physical dimensions of a graph by selecting the Extents/Intervals/Size command on the Options menu and checking
the Specify Size box. When you do this, the graph will always retain the same proportions, regardless of the extents of the device.
The size specified in this dialog is the width and height of the box around the plot, not necessarily the entire graph extents.
If you also check the Specify extents and Specify interval boxes then you can control the physical distance between
grid lines and/or tick marks. In other words you can use DPlot to print a ruler, accurate to your printer resolution. |
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| Alternative to the Extents/Intervals/Size command, you can set the physical size of 2D plots by dragging one of the plot corners. Dimensions
are displayed in the default units set with the General command on the Options menu. |
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Fonts
You can control the font face, style, size and other attributes of any text entry on a graph by clicking the Fonts button on the toolbar
or by right-clicking on the item and selecting Font from the dropdown menu:
If you specify the physical size of the plot using the Extents/Intervals/Size command described above and that size
will not fit within the output device extents (printer margins, for example), then DPlot will scale the graph down such that it will fit,
and use that same scale factor for all fonts, line widths, symbol sizes, etc. In this way DPlot ensures that the graph has the same appearance
on all devices. |
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Line and symbol attributes
You can control the line weight, line style, symbol size, symbol style, and color used for any curve on a graph by right-clicking on the graph
and selecting the appropriate menu item. DPlot includes 7 line styles and 40 symbol styles. You may also select any of the characters from the
Wingdings fonts to use as a symbol. Each of these attributes are also accessible via toolbar buttons and commands on the Options menu. |
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For a more complete list of DPlot features see the Features page.
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RUNS ON
Windows 7, 2008,
Vista, XP, NT,
ME, 2003, 2000,
Windows 98, 95
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