Digitizing paper plots

[Don Fleming]

I often have to pull data from X-Y plots for use in computer programs. The plots are usually old and have been copied many times. Thus, the scales may be skewed, and grid lines may be hard to read. Extracting data from these plots is difficult and quite tedious.

I would like to be able to import a scan of an old plot and do the following:

1. Click at the origin and at the end of each scale to define the scales. Then, the numerical limits of the scales could be specified.

2. Click on the lines or scattered points on the plot to bring the X-Y data into DPlot. DPlot could determine the X-Y values for each point, given the location of each point relative to the scales defined in step 1.

Once the points are defined, then the features of DPlot could be used to generate a good paper copy of the plot, to do a curve fit, and to copy the data to other programs.

While other programs exist for doing some of this ( search for the words 'scan' and 'plot' on download.com to locate 3 of these programs ), none of them have the graphing capabilities of DPlot.

[DPlotAdmin]

Don,
That would be a nice capability, but like you say:

...none of them have the graphing capabilities of DPlot.

and I have several more plot types in the works. I think users would be better served by me concentrating on what DPlot does best and leave this (for now) to folks that specialize in it.

I've used DigitizeIt and though for my own use I'd of course prefer to be able to recreate the original data by calculations, data files, etc., it does a reasonable job when you have no other option.