OriginLab Corporation - Scientific Graphing and Data Analysis Software - 2D graphs, 3D graphs, Contour Plots, Statistical Charts, Data Exploration, Statistics, Curve Fitting, Signal Processing, and Peak Analysis

Basic 2D Plotting

Summary

Origin provides flexible ways to create 2D plots. You can easily customize plot attributes, arrange layers, and select different datasets for each layer. This tutorial will teach you the basic plotting skills.

Minimum Origin Version Required: Origin 8.0 SR6

What you will learn

This tutorial will show you how to:

Steps

Simple row statistics

  1. Start with an empty worksheet, select File: Import: Single ASCII... to open the Import Single ASCII dialog, browse to the \Samples\Curve Fitting subfolder of the Origin program folder, and import the file Dose Response - No Inhibitor.dat.

  2. Highlight columns 2 through 4 and select Statistics: Descriptive Statistics: Statistics on Rows. Make sure to check the Mean and Standard Deviation check boxes on Quantities to Compute > Moments branch to output these results.

    Image:Tutorial 2D Plot 001New.png

  3. After you click the OK button, two new columns, Mean(Y) and SD(yErr) are added to the source worksheet. Here, yErr means that this is an error column and the data in this column can be used to plot error bars.

    Note: To simplify plotting, each column in an Origin worksheet has a plotting designation. To change a column's plotting designation, select the column and click on the Column menu. Alternatively, right-click on the column and choose Set As from the context menu.

Create a graph and save as a template

  1. Highlight the Mean(Y) and SD(yEr-) columns and select Plot: Line+Symbol: Line+Symbol to create the plot:

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_002.png

  2. To change the X scale to Log, double-click on the X axis to bring up the X Axis dialog. On the Scale tab, change the axis Type to Log10:

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_003.png

    Click the OK button to close the dialog.

  3. Select Graph: Rescale to Show All from the menu, which will rescale the X and Y axes of the graph. :

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_004.png

  4. To edit the curve, double-click on any plot symbol to bring up the Plot Details dialog. Alternatively, right-click inside the graph and choose Plot Details from the context menu. On the Line tab of right panel, select B-Spline as connect line to get a smoother curve.

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_005.png

    Click the OK button to close the dialog.

  5. When all modifications have been made and the graph looks the way you want it, you can use this graph to create a template, to be used in the future with similar data. Select File: Save Template as to open the Save Template dialog. In the Category drop-down list, select UserDefined; and then type a proper Template Name. In this example, we use MyTemplate. Click OK to save the template.

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_006.png

Plot into graph template with the Plot Setup dialog

  1. Click the Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_007.png button to open a new workbook, and import the file \Samples\Curve Fitting\Dose Response - Inhibitor.dat as above. Perform Statistics on Rows, calculating the Mean and SD of this worksheet as you did above and by following the same steps.

  2. Select Plot: Template Library to open the Template Library. Select MyTemplate from the UserDefined category.

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_008.png

    Click the Plot Setup button to select the data from which to create the plot. If you click the Plot button, Origin will plot whatever data is highlighted in the worksheet.

  3. In the Plot Setup dialog, you can choose which columns are to be plotted. (There are three panels in Plot Setup dialog, click the Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_button01.png or Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_button02.png button to expand them) To finish creating the plot from your template, please follow the steps a - e outlined on the picture below.

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_009.png

    And then you will have:

    Image:Tutorial_2D_Plot_020.png