Not to many people's surprise anymore, I'm both an engineer and a Mac user. While this would have been a serious anomaly a couple years ago, it seems more and more common these days, especially when working with other Unix/Linux machines. That aside, I had long been plotting all my data using the various functions in Matlab, and for the most part, I was very happy with the results (see here for reference). What I found, however, is that 3D scatter plots came out looking pretty terrible, and my start in molecular dynamics simulations required the scatter plots somewhat frequently.
So, there I was, looking lustfully at the gnuplot demos, so rich in their 3D visualization options. However, after downloading, extracting, and messing around in the terminal I found latest build (4.2.4) was having some issues with the makefile, even after configuration. I searched on the web for a while for some help which was fruitless until I stumbled upon this little nugget, which was a great relief, as I tend to be sort of lazy when sifting through readme's. To be honest, that entry alone has all the information you really need, but it assumes some basic awareness of a few things I hadn't heard about before, so I thought I'd post this information in a more outright manner.
UPDATE: Thanks to some feedback, I failed to note that you should install X11 and XCode before attempting to install MacPorts. X11 is available on your OS X install disc, and XCode is available (at no cost) on the Apple Developer webpage.
So, there I was, looking lustfully at the gnuplot demos, so rich in their 3D visualization options. However, after downloading, extracting, and messing around in the terminal I found latest build (4.2.4) was having some issues with the makefile, even after configuration. I searched on the web for a while for some help which was fruitless until I stumbled upon this little nugget, which was a great relief, as I tend to be sort of lazy when sifting through readme's. To be honest, that entry alone has all the information you really need, but it assumes some basic awareness of a few things I hadn't heard about before, so I thought I'd post this information in a more outright manner.
- MacPorts: Probably one of the coolest things ever, simple as hell, and quite powerful. MacPorts allows you to install a number of software packages by simply typing "install packagename" in the Terminal. Installation of MacPorts is a breeze once you download their disk image (.dmg) and run their installer (.mpkg), which you can get here.
- Once MacPorts has been installed, you'll need to start a new Terminal session. At that point, it's as easy as typing "sudo port install gnuplot" in the Terminal. I'll warn you, this installation can take a while (~30 minutes) as you download and install all the smaller software packages required.
UPDATE: Thanks to some feedback, I failed to note that you should install X11 and XCode before attempting to install MacPorts. X11 is available on your OS X install disc, and XCode is available (at no cost) on the Apple Developer webpage.
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