Graphs & presentation
19 steps in 5 sets of Igor Pro.
Igor's graphics are the reason a lot of labs bought it, and the reason they have not left. This tour goes from Display and AppendToGraph through images, contours, bar charts and subwindows, then into the styling that makes a figure publishable: ModifyGraph, axes, offsets, style macros, free axes, and coloring a trace from a third wave.
After that comes annotation. Legends, tags, draw layers, cursors and error bars. Then getting the thing out of Igor and into a paper, via layouts and SavePICT, with a detour through finding the front window when your procedure has to work on whichever graph the user is looking at. The Encore builds a figure end to end.
Making a graph
- Making a graphDisplay opens a window on a wave; everything after that names the window.
- Several tracesAppendToGraph adds to the current graph; the trace name is how you address it.
- Images and contoursA two-dimensional wave can be drawn as an image or as contour lines.
- Bar chartsA bar chart is a trace in a different mode, against a text wave for the categories.
- Graphs inside a windowA graph can host another graph, which is how a figure becomes one window.
Styling
- Styling tracesModifyGraph is one operation with a hundred keywords, addressed per trace.
- AxesSetAxis fixes a range, and the axis keywords decide how it reads.
- Offsets and multipliersA trace can be shifted and scaled for display without touching the data.
- Style macrosIgor can write the styling back out as a macro, which is how a house style travels.
- More than two axesLeft and right come free; anything beyond that is an axis you make yourself.
- Color from a third waveA trace can take its color from data instead of from a constant.
Marking it up
- AnnotationsLegends, text boxes and tags are all annotations, addressed by name.
- Drawing on a graphThe draw layers sit above or below the data and take plain coordinates.
- CursorsCursors A and B mark points on a trace, and a function can read or place them.
- Error barsErrorBars attaches to a trace and reads its bars from waves or from an expression.
Off the screen
- LayoutsA layout is the page: graphs and tables placed where the figure needs them.
- Exporting a figureSavePICT writes what is on screen; the flags decide the format and the resolution.
- Finding the right windowA function that acts on the front graph has to ask which one that is.
Encore
- figure_builder.ipfA publication figure built by code, so the next one matches without anyone remembering how.