New source of inspiration/data

**accessD** · 28 July 2010, 12:35 PM

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

**Fred C** · 28 July 2010, 01:58 PM

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

Regards,

**Karateed** · 28 July 2010, 07:33 PM

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

**Karateed** · 28 July 2010, 08:19 PM

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....

**angelize** · 28 July 2010, 08:28 PM

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

**accessD** · 30 July 2010, 10:34 AM

Better sine wave hand-made.

**amoore** · 30 July 2010, 05:46 PM

And not hard, either. Thanks, Dmitry.

**Karateed** · 30 July 2010, 08:55 PM

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

Nice one.....

**ss-kalm** · 31 July 2010, 02:31 AM

Originally Posted by accessD

Better sine wave hand-made.

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

**gwpriester** · 31 July 2010, 03:56 PM

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)?