[Tex/LaTex] exceeding memory with tikz (even after externalise)

memorytikz-pgf

The issue is quite simple, I have a bunch of figures being generated with tikz (which in turn calls gnuplot). In order to bypass the memory issue I externalised tikz, which was fine until I tried plotting a larger contour (around 100k points). I now get the "! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [main memory size=10000000]." error even if I increase the main memory by editing texmf.cnf

I can plot the figure in question with gnuplot independently but would rather have it done within the latex file for easier editing.

Any suggestions?

Best Answer

there appears to be no direct solution, the options are: - either use luatex (see @PaulGaborit's reply) - reduce the number of points to be plotted (see @mirkom's reply) - generate the plot as a standalone file and then include the pdf (see @Rico's reply)

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] pgfplot: plotting a large dataset

That's one very densely sampled dataset! As Paul Gaborit pointed out in the comment, you'll want to downsample this first, especially if the data is this smooth. Plotting every single data point will blow up the file size and decrease rendering performance without adding any value to the plot.

You can use gnuplot within PGFPlots to downsample the data. If you only plot every 1000th point, the plot is indistinguishable from the full data, but you can stick with pdflatex instead of having to use lualatex.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{pgfplotstable}

\usepgfplotslibrary{external} 
\tikzexternalize
\pgfplotsset{compat=newest}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
  \begin{axis}
    \addplot [no markers] gnuplot [raw gnuplot] {
        plot "largefile.csv" using ($0*1000):1 every 1000; % $0 is the dummy column for the coordinate index
    };
  \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

If you need non-uniform sampling, you can just concatenate several plot commands:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{pgfplotstable}

\usepgfplotslibrary{external} 
\tikzexternalize
\pgfplotsset{compat=newest}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
  \begin{axis}
    \addplot [no markers] gnuplot [raw gnuplot] {
        plot "largefile.csv" using ($0):1 every 1::1::300;
        plot "largefile.csv" using ($0*100+300):1 every 100::300::6000;
        plot "largefile.csv" using ($0*1000+6000):1 every 1000::6000
    };
  \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] TeX capacity exceeded (save size)

You can set the save size in texmf.cnf, eg TL2013 default setup has

save_size  = 100000     % for saving values outside current group

It will be somewhere like

/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/web2c/texmf.cnf

see

kpsewhich texmf.cnf

But 99 times out of 100 if you are using a save stack of more than a few hundred, you are repeatedly setting the same token with both local and global assignments and using arbitrarily large save stack. (It is to avoid this problem that plain tex introduces the convention of using odd scratch registers for global assignments and even ones for local)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] pgfplot: plotting a large dataset

[Tex/LaTex] TeX capacity exceeded (save size)

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