3D Equation Grapher

[J Goodrich]

What are some good, preferably free, programs that one can use to graph 3D equations and possibly perform integration/differentiation techniques to?

[Galadirith]

Hi Goodrich, well you should check out GNUplot (http://www.gnuplot.info/), it uses a command line interface shell, so you type your equations or data in and it then generate a 3D plot of that equation. It is a very widely used program.

Depending on what operating system your running on, and if you arnt comfortable with a CLI then there are other extra bits of software that add a Graphical user interface to be a bit more user freindly.

Hopefully that will help, you might need to root around GNUplots site and mabye a quick google to get the basic idea of how to work the program, but there are plenty of resources out there :D

EDIT: oh and I forgot a while ago I stumbled accross this Online 3D grapher (http://www.livephysics.com/ptools/online-3d-function-grapher.php), which isnt nearly as diverse as GNUplot, but if you just want to visualise what an equation would look like that might be useful

[Sankaku]

You can use wxMaxima to generate GNUplot graphs of 3d functions. It also does whatever else you want... :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_(software)

[itsamespez]

Got an iphone? App store search quick graph. Its free and a pretty good 3d graphing calculater. Cant perform derivatives and such though.