Digitizing paper plots
Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 9:21 am
I often have to pull data from X-Y plots for use in computer programs. The plots are usually old and have been copied many times. Thus, the scales may be skewed, and grid lines may be hard to read. Extracting data from these plots is difficult and quite tedious.
I would like to be able to import a scan of an old plot and do the following:
1. Click at the origin and at the end of each scale to define the scales. Then, the numerical limits of the scales could be specified.
2. Click on the lines or scattered points on the plot to bring the X-Y data into DPlot. DPlot could determine the X-Y values for each point, given the location of each point relative to the scales defined in step 1.
Once the points are defined, then the features of DPlot could be used to generate a good paper copy of the plot, to do a curve fit, and to copy the data to other programs.
While other programs exist for doing some of this ( search for the words 'scan' and 'plot' on download.com to locate 3 of these programs ), none of them have the graphing capabilities of DPlot.
I would like to be able to import a scan of an old plot and do the following:
1. Click at the origin and at the end of each scale to define the scales. Then, the numerical limits of the scales could be specified.
2. Click on the lines or scattered points on the plot to bring the X-Y data into DPlot. DPlot could determine the X-Y values for each point, given the location of each point relative to the scales defined in step 1.
Once the points are defined, then the features of DPlot could be used to generate a good paper copy of the plot, to do a curve fit, and to copy the data to other programs.
While other programs exist for doing some of this ( search for the words 'scan' and 'plot' on download.com to locate 3 of these programs ), none of them have the graphing capabilities of DPlot.