PHYS 580   COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS 

Introduction to Grace graphing program

This is a brief introduction to Grace, a useful and free graphing package. Grace works well on nearly any Unix/Linux-like platform; in principle it can be run under Windows (although I have not tried this myself). For more information go to the Grace web site, http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/

Also see the Grace manual  http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/doc/UsersGuide.html or (new) the Grace tutorial http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/doc/Tutorial.html

Grace is difficult to run remotely, unless you set up X-windows properly.  Grace is setup on the computers in the computational lab.

To run Grace on the computational lab computers (on the Linux drive)

xmgrace

or

xmgrace &

To read in a file

Click Data --> Import --> Ascii

Choose file ( .dat is default type) and click Okay

To manipulate the presentation of the data (e.g., change color, use dashed lines, etc.)

Click Plot --> Set appearances

To manipulate the axes

Click Plot --> Axis properties

To change from linear to log see "Scale"

You can also change the range of the axis, the spacing of tick marks, etc.

To save graph

Click File --> Save (you'll have to enter a name)

To write out graph as a postscript file

Click File --> Print setup...

Choose PostScript or EPS as Device

Click on button "Print to file"

Click on Apply then Close

Go back... click File --> Print

Last modified Nov 9, 2006