New source of inspiration/data

Hi

Recently a friend of my asked me how to draw simple sine wave in Xara.

After a minute I came up with a pretty unusual solution.

I advised to visit http://www.wolframalpha.com and enter sin(x) expression in "compute" field.

At the bottom of the result page is "Download as: PDF" link. After saving resulting PDF on disk you can reopen it in Xara, and extract desired sine wave from drawing by removing ClipViews and Groups.

WolframAlpfa is computational knowledge engine. It can provide many other data like charts, plots, equations, stocks, weather conditions, maps, orbits, chemistry data, fractals and many, many more..

I recommend to visit their Visual Gallery of Examples http://www.wolframalpha.com/gallery.html

BTW, you can generate spirals there )

Cheers

Thank you for the link, Dmitry! It has some very interesting stuff.

Regards,

Or....you could just draw the sine wave for fun....

Decided to create a small tut to see what others go through....it's an interesting challenge if you've never done one....and this is a simple one...I have a deeper appreciation for what you folks do for us in these tuts....thanks....

Very interesting site. But as math was never my strong point I think I'll continue to use SPXE to generate my spirals.

Better sine wave hand-made.

And not hard, either. Thanks, Dmitry.

Yes, I agree, better sine wave and easier method......

Nice one.....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by accessD

Better sine wave hand-made.

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Using this method, the first and last nodes aren't correct. Although much more accurate than the previous methods.

I was never good at math and so 99.99% of what WolframAlpha can do is beyond my abilities.

But I use a very simple equation frequently to determine what width I need to draw an object such as a repeating panel for my stereogram images, in Designer so that it will export at 300dpi to a specified width.

I enter the formula x/768 = 450/2400 solve for X and in seconds find that my panel needs to be 144 pixels wide.

Where was WolframAlpha when I was struggling with Algebra (in the 1950s)? :rolleyes:

Wouldn't it have been quicker to use the calculator for a simple equation like 450/2400x768 :D

Joking aside Gary I know what you mean about math in the 1950's the only 'calculators' available then were log tables and slide rules.

Here is a method that doesn't involve any calculations.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

... Where was WolframAlpha when I was struggling with Algebra (in the 1950s)? :rolleyes:

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According to Wikipedia Mr. Wolfram was born in 1959 :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram

He was already ahead of me the day he was born. :-O

To SS Kalm:

Just break a cycle off at the correct nodes (change the nodes to cusps first), then copy the result and string them together.