DataGraph Update, Registration, and Request
Today I noticed that DataGraph had gone to version 1.4 and there was a new forums site. So I decided to register a version, get the Framework, and request the features that I've wanted to have for a long time: contour and heat graphs. 2D graphs, but based on 3D data. These would be the types of graphs that I really want to put into my Potentials code that I started building a long time ago. The simplicity and design of DataGraph is really quite amazing. While it's not exactly what I would have done, it's certainly a new and interesting take on the data plotting application and it's got everything that you could ask for in 2D plotting - save these two graph types.
Certainly, something like VantagePoint would be great, but that's Java, and it's $25,000 for a license. Additionally, there's no application with VantagePoint - you have to code up everything yourself. Now, I've gotten pretty good at using VantagePoint, but still... it's not the easiest thing for creating new plot types as you have to build an entire testing framework to see if you have the parameters set right for the graph you want. It's got great documentation, but still... to have an application would be a plus.
That's what I was hoping for with DataGraph. We'll see if he's interested in making DataGraph Plus and charging $200 or so - making it fall between the $30 DataGraph and the $1200 DataTank. While DataTank would be nice, I'm just not doing that much visualization to justify the cost. It'd be nice to be able to make a few big improvements in the output visualization of the fields. That would be a lot of fun.