[Tex/LaTex] gnuplot, plot rotation arrows

gnuplot

Recently I have been using gnuplot to plot position data over time. In my datafile, I have time,positional (2D) information, and directional information (in the form of degrees, 0-360). I have nice plots of position wrt to time, however, I was wondering if it's possible to plot degrees as a rotation of individual plot characters. Does anyone have any suggestions for a way to do this?

here is the example script that I am plotting. In this plot there are three files, and 3 data sets. Each containing position and time information, and representing data from a different antenna type. columns 3 and 2 contain position information, and column 1 contains time information.

gnuplot> plot 'gpsfile1.txt' using 3:2:1 ls 1 lc palette title 'smallant', 'gpsfile2.txt' using 6:5:4 ls 5 lc palette title 'FullWave', 'ant_lady_dog_clouds.txt' using 9:8:7 ls 7 lc palette title 'control'

plotted, this data looks like this

2d position data over time time

I have a 4th column that represents orientation from magnetic north. I would like to know if there is a good way to display this 4th dimension, preferably by rotating the markers.
Any thoughts?

Best Answer

Remarks

I'm not sure if I got you right. If you want to annotate your points with an additional orientation use the using vectors style.

Implementation

Because this is TeX.SX, the solution incorporates the epslatex terminal :-).

#!/usr/bin/env gnuplot

reset
set terminal epslatex color standalone
set output 'gnuplot.tex'

set angles degrees
set xrange [0:3]
set yrange [0:4]

plot '-' using 1:2:(0.2*cos($4)):(0.2*sin($4)):3 with vectors linecolor palette notitle
# x y color angle
  1 1 5     30
  2 1 4     40
  2 3 3     45
  1 2 3     60
  2 2 4     160
  1 3 3     80

Output

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Easiest way to plot matrix image

As the sample matrix datasets(131*131) are large in size LuaLaTeX -shell-escape approach was adopted and pdflatex fails due to memory limitations. I have retained the TeX memory defaults on TeXLive 2012 frozen. In view of your real datasets of size (1000x500) points. I made some points to help you.
TeX memory problems in pgfplots can be resolved by(More info at Section 6.1 pgfplots manual revision 1.8, 17/3/2013)

1)How to expand TeX's "main memory size"? (pgfplots memory overload) and How can one predict pgfplots memory overload?

2)Downsampling the data using gnuplot or sed as discussed in pgfplot: plotting a large dataset.

3)Export separate figure pdf's using pgfplots externalize library to reduce the compilation time and avoid memory problems for large documents.

4)Alternatively use fully gnuplot solution using gnuplottex package via improved terminal exports epslatex, pdf, and lua/tikz.

gnuplot lua/tikz terminal driver

"The lua terminal driver creates data intended to be further processed by a script in the lua programming language. At this point only one such lua script, gnuplot-tikz.lua, is available. It produces a TeX document suitable for use with the latex TikZ package. Other lua scripts could be written to process the gnuplot output for use with other TeX packages, or with other non-TeX tools. set term tikz is shorthand for set term lua tikz. As decribed above, it uses the generic lua terminal and an external lua script to produce a latex document" from gnuplot 4.6 documentation

Examples:

A tikz terminal can export full-plot.tex of plot like in this TeXample.net example and gnuplottikz example

Hoping this works for you.

Using pgfplots (invoking gnuplot) and it's groupplot library. on 131*131 matrix dataset provided by OP

\documentclass[preview=true,12pt,border=2pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=newest}
\usepgfplotslibrary{groupplots} 
%\usepgfplotslibrary{external}
%\tikzexternalize% activate externalization!
% same matrix data used for all four figures for illustration
% code compiled with lualatex -shell-escape, gnuplot 4.4.3 and pgfplots 1.8 
% Matrix dataset(131*131) in "mat-data.dat" (provided by OP in comment). 
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{groupplot}[view={0}{90},colorbar,colormap/bluered,colorbar style={%
ytick={-19,-18,-17,-16,-15,-14,-13,-12,-11}},label style={font=\small},group style={group size=2 by 2,horizontal sep=3cm},
height=3.5cm,width=3.5cm,footnotesize]
\nextgroupplot % First Figure
\addplot3[raw gnuplot,surf,shader=interp]
            gnuplot[id={surf}]{%
set pm3d map interpolate 0,0;
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3));}; %natural logarithm
\nextgroupplot % Second Figure
\addplot3[raw gnuplot,surf,shader=interp]
            gnuplot[id={surf}]{%
set pm3d map interpolate 0,0;
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3));};
\nextgroupplot % Third Figure
\addplot3[raw gnuplot,surf,shader=interp]
            gnuplot[id={surf}]{%
set pm3d map interpolate 0,0;
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3));};
\nextgroupplot % Fourth Figure
\addplot3[raw gnuplot,surf,shader=interp]
            gnuplot[id={surf}]{%
set pm3d map interpolate 0,0;
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3));};
\end{groupplot}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

code compiled with lualatex -shell-escape, gnuplot 4.4.3 and pgfplots 1.8

enter image description here

Alternative Approach(option 4 above): Using fully gnuplot based on gnuplottex package

code compiled with pdflatex -shell-escape, gnuplot 4.4.3 and gnuplottex(version October 2, 2012)

enter image description here

\documentclass[preview=true,border=2pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{gnuplottex} 
\begin{document}    
\begin{gnuplot}[terminal=epslatex,terminaloptions={font ",7"}]
set tmargin 0       # set white top margin in multiplot figure
set bmargin 1       # set white bottom margin in multiplot figure  
set lmargin 0
set rmargin 0 
set xrange [0:130]; # x and y axis range 
set yrange [0:130];
set cbrange [-19:-12]; # colorbox range  
unset key;             # disables plot legend or  use "notitle"  
set palette model RGB defined (0 '#0000B4',1 '#00FFFF',2 '#64FF00',3 '#FFFF00',4 '#FF0000',5 '#800000');         # hex colormap matching pgfplots "colormap/bluered"  
set pm3d map;       # `splot` for drawing palette-mapped 3d colormaps/surfaces
set pm3d interpolate 0,0; # interpolate optimal number of grid points into finer mesh, and          
                          # color each quadrangle with 0,0
set multiplot layout 2,2 rowsfirst scale 0.9,1.2;  # subplots 2 by 2
# First Figure
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3)); # matrix data with log(z-axis)
# Second Figure
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3)); 
# Third Figure
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3)); 
# Fourth Figure
splot 'mat-data.dat' matrix using 1:2:(log($3)); 
unset multiplot;
\end{gnuplot}
\end{document}

Alternative Approach: Reading from mat-data.dat file directly in pgfplots

I have failed to get result in this way. Anybody can give their feedback. \addplot3[surf,mesh/cols=131,mesh/ordering=rowwise,shader=interp] file {mat-data.dat};

[Tex/LaTex] datetime plot in pgfplot using gnuplot

gnuplot does not seem to generate any valid x coordinate (only useless strings), and pgfplots chokes on that. I experimented a bid but failed to reconfigure gnuplot accordingly.

If you cannot get gnuplot to write suitable x coordinates, I suppose the solution is to invoke gnuplot manually (or by writing \immediate\write18{<system call>}) and then using pgfplots to read the resulting table.

Note that you also seem to have a minor issue in your time format: the comma in the timefmt is useless as it is also a column separator.

What I did not quite understand is the purpose of gnuplot in this example. Perhaps what you need is to run gnuplot, let it generate some numerical x coordinate, read that into pgfplots and assign suitable x tick labels.

However, pgfplots seems to be doing a reasonable job on your file which I'd like to include here - at the risk of missing a central point of your questions:

enter image description here

\documentclass[border=5mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz,pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.8}
\usepgfplotslibrary{dateplot}


\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis} [width=21cm, height=14cm,
date ZERO=2012-06-01,
date coordinates in=x,
max space between ticks=70pt,
xticklabel=\month-\day\space\Hour:\Minute,
]

\addplot table[col sep=comma] {datafile.dat};

\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Best Answer

Remarks

Implementation

Output

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Easiest way to plot matrix image

[Tex/LaTex] datetime plot in pgfplot using gnuplot

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