software to plot high quality figures

[stone]

What are the softwares that people usually use to create high quality schematic figures (both in 2D and 3D) suitable for publication?
For example Fig 1) in http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.1787

[Old Guy]

I use gnuplot to produce .eps figures. It's chief benefit is that it is free.

[stone]

Thanks for the reply. I have used it to plot data in both 2D and 3D. But can we draw schematic 3D figures using it, like in the reference quoted in my previous post?

[stone]

any more help would be greatly appreciated!

[a-tom-ic]

You could aswell use: TikZ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikZ)
- Examples: http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/tag/3d/
However that is not a drawing program :).

If drawing is more your interest:
2D-Vectordrawing: CorelDraw, Inkscape, Illustrator ( im pretty sure you could draw the simple 3d-picture of the paper you linked to in any of those aswell )
3D-Modelling: Blender, Cinema4D, 3dsmax ...

For graphs there are specialized tools aswell: Origin, SciDavis, Gnuplot

[stone]

thanks a lot!
that was exactly what I was looking for

[a-tom-ic]

So which of the programs mentioned do you use now?

[Astronuc]

We've used SigmaPlot, particularly for 3D surface plots, but it seems to be rather limited.

I'd like to be able to look through the surfaces.

We've also used Gnuplot, but it has limitations.

There's also Ensight - http://www.ensight.com/ - but it's expensive, and Paraview - http://www.paraview.org/.

[stone]

I have started looking at coreldraw and illustrator.
By the way, some of the 'pseudo' 3d drawing can also be done with gimp, which is free.

[a-tom-ic]

Inkscape is free too and does the same as coreldraw and illustrator

[stone]

inkscape looks really good too!