Figure drawing software for textbooks and ebooks (education)

[FischerBoy]

Hi,
I'm looking for a great software for drawing illustrations in physics (Graphs, geometry, box drawings, integral and area 2d Graphs) and perhaps some trigonometry (triangles, Graphs, unit circles with angles/degree). I'm on a windows computer and the purpose is for making textbooks and ebooks?

 

[gsal]

There are many, many choices...it depends on the specifics of what you want to do and how much you are willing to invest to achieve it...some programs require a learning curve but some people don't mind the investment...for one-of, you may want to choose some friendly, easy to use, GUI-based program...otherwise, powerful tools exist but most probably require some scripting, programming.

For example, you can produce some very amazing drawing with latex/tikz itslef...browse this page and the various links.

There is also Asymptote, with its own syntax.

 

[jackmell]

I use Mathematica and I've done a lot of graphics programming. The illustration here is an annular region of the imaginary component of the inverse of a 12-degree polynomial showing three (color-coded) 4-cycle branches. My point is not to show-off but rather to illustrate that if Mathematica can do something as complicated as this, then it can probably do also what you want.