# Data plotting software

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-plotting-software/408102>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [June 15, 2007, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-plotting-software/408102 "2007-06-15T08:24:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-plotting-software/408102/1 "2007-06-15T08:24:59Z")

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I have a bunch of data that I need to plot, and in my innocence, I thought Excel would be able to handle it. It’s a 3D plot, which apparently Excel doesn’t do without much jiggery-pokery which I’m frankly not interested in. Fairly simple - 2 parameters on the X and Y axes, and the values on the Z axis, all of which are in a comma-delimited text file.

Does anyone have any suggestions for freeware or shareware that I could use for this? I don’t really want to pay $100 for a plotter that’s just going to be used a few times. I figured that as we have many scientific-type people here, it would be worth asking.

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**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2007, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/data-plotting-software/408102/2 "2007-06-15T09:08:09Z")

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[gnuplot](http://www.gnuplot.info/) does things like that.