Golden Software, a leading developer of mapping, plotting, and visualization software, has continued to enhance the user friendliness of its Grapher scientific graphing package for easier data exploration by both long-time and first-time users. In addition, Templates have been overhauled and improved in Beta form for users to try out and provide feedback.
“Our development team has continued to make Grapher more user friendly, upgrading many features and functions requested by existing users and making the software easier to learn for first timers,” said Zach Mills, Golden Software CEO. “Users at every level will find the latest version of Grapher facilitates data exploration for greater productivity.”
Grapher is used extensively by scientists and engineers in environmental services and consulting, climate research, exploration, and academic pursuits. The package offers deeper insights into diverse data sets, including chemical, physical, geologic, and geospatial data, through 80 different 2D and 3D plotting types. Grapher is often used to plot data captured by a variety of chemical and physical sensors in the field.
The Grapher package enables users to make better decisions by visualizing and communicating complex data sets in ways that simply can’t be accomplished with spreadsheets. The newest release of Grapher, which is downloadable now to all users with active maintenance or subscription agreements, includes these enhancements:
Improved Object Manager
- Title Linked to Object Name – Names of objects in the Object Manager are now linked to the Title Field on a graph so that changes to one automatically updates the other. Graphs can be quickly and easily renamed with the edit saved in Object Manager. No more changing names in two separate places.
- Toggle Visibility for Multiple Objects – With a single click, users can now turn on or off multiple objects to be visible in various pages of a large Grapher project showing different iterations of a plot. In the past, users had to select objects individually to be shown or hidden on each page.
Title Colors Match Plot and Axes Colors
- Grapher now gives users the ability to automatically link font colors in the title to match the colors of plot and axes lines either in a single graph or throughout a document.
Coincident Major and Minor Ticks
- Major and minor tick names, such as “Year” and “Month” can now be represented simultaneously on the same graph axis.
Easier Data Exploration
- Improved Bar Chart Axes Calculations – Users can now easily switch the scaling types of their bar charts, e.g. from linear to log or vice versa, and Grapher automatically calculates changes to the axes without missing data or unnecessarily changing properties.
- Auto Scaling of Bar Chart Axes – Now when users choose a non-zero base value to start their bar chart Grapher automatically re-scales the axes so the spacing makes sense without losing data.
- Consistent Axes Labels – When users switch back and forth between scaling types in their bar charts, scatter plots or line plots, the software keeps the axes labels and tick spacing consistent, so users no longer have to go back and reset the labels with each change.
Grapher Beta Available
As is tradition, Golden Software has released a Beta version of Grapher simultaneously with the new version to give customers a chance to try out new features and provide feedback while they are still in development. Users may find the Beta version by clicking File | Online from within Grapher.
“In the latest release of Grapher, we have introduced completely redesigned and re-imagined Templates in Beta format,” said Mills. “We expect Templates will become among the most powerful and frequently used features in Grapher moving forward.”
Grapher has traditionally offered three file types: Project, Grapher, and Template files. Template files have been the least used. Now, however, Templates offer more guidance for the user to create graphs that clearly and vividly present their data for viewing and interpretation. With 30 designs to choose from, the Templates guide the user in how and where to input data and then show them how it will appear when completed. Templates also link directly to Excel or other data files. Users can save their customized Templates for repeated use.
Templates are available to users both locally installed in Grapher and in an online library. Beta users have access to both. In the near future, users will be able to upload their own custom Templates to the library for sharing with other Grapher users.
For additional information, visit www.GoldenSoftware.com
