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Re: Scientific drawing tools?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg40762] Re: [mg40721] Scientific drawing tools?
  • From: Selwyn Hollis <selwynh at earthlink.net>
  • Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 01:38:20 -0400 (EDT)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Wolfgang,

To do serious drawing, one really needs something like Adobe 
Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand. However, it's actually quite fun to 
create drawings with Mathematica---and an excellent way to learn the 
graphics "paradigm." Practicality is another matter though, since it 
can be very time-consuming.

The following is some Mathematica code that I used to create a picture 
for a calculus problem. I hope it provides a good example.

$TextStyle = {FontFamily -> "Times", FontSize -> 14};
sun = Graphics[{
      {RGBColor[1,1,0], 
Polygon[Table[(1+0.2*(-1)^(10*k))*{Cos[k*Pi],Sin[k*Pi]}, {k,0,2,0.1}]]},
      {Hue[.12], Disk[{0, 0}, 1]}}];
venus = Graphics[{RGBColor[0,.4,.6], Disk[{-1.5, 5}, 0.2]}];
earth = Graphics[{RGBColor[0,.7,.6], Disk[{8, 1}, 0.2]}];
triangle = Graphics[{Dashing[{0.02}], Line[{{0, 0},{-1.5, 5}, {8, 
1},{0, 0}}]}];
perp = Graphics[{Line[{{-1.75, 4.52}, {-1.4, 4.65}}],
                  Line[{{-1.75, 4.52}, {-1.86, 4.9}}],
                {Dashing[{0.0175}], Line[{{-2.5, 4.75}, {0.5, 5.6}}]}}];
labels = Graphics[{
      Text["Sun", {1.5, -0.5}],
      Text["Earth", {8, 0.5}],
      Text["Venus", {-1.7, 5.5}],
      Text[StyleForm["A", FontSlant -> "Italic"], {6.9, 1.1}],
      Text[StyleForm["B", FontSlant -> "Italic"], {-1., 4.4}],
      Text[StyleForm["C", FontSlant -> "Italic"], {-0.5, 5.}],
      Text[StyleForm["R", FontSlant -> "Italic"], {4, 0.2}],
      Text[StyleForm["r", FontSlant -> "Italic"], {-1.1, 2.5}],
      Text[StyleForm["d", FontSlant -> "Italic"], {3, 3.5}],
      Text["\[Phi]", {1, 1.25}]}];
Show[labels, perp, triangle, earth, venus, sun, AspectRatio -> 
Automatic, PlotRange -> All];

-----
Selwyn Hollis
http://www.math.armstrong.edu/faculty/hollis


On Tuesday, April 15, 2003, at 03:57  AM, Dr. Wolfgang Hintze wrote:

> Is there a simple way to electronically produce a scientific drawing
> similar to what I can do on paper by hand in order to explain 
> something,
> e.g. a geometrical situation?
> This question goes not only for mathematica but is more general. Most 
> of
> the time I use the limited drawing capabilities of Microsoft Office.
> (Try to draw an arc and call it alpha).
> Or do I do it on paper, scan it and import it?
>
> Any hints welcome.
> Wolfgang
>
>
>



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