What software do you use to accurately draw geometry diagrams?
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Tikz is a nice LaTeX package for easily drawing diagrams. Diagrams are made by putting code directly into the TeX document, eliminating the need for extra image files. The package also is very powerful and versatile; the manual contains a very detailed description of its features. |
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Asymptote is my tool of choice for virtually any mathematics diagram, geometry included. |
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Geometer's Sketchpad— Sketchpad 5 exports/copy-pastes diagrams much better than 4 did. |
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One of the best is WinGCLC. Graph quality is really exceptional, it's easy to use, can be easily exported to SVG/EPS/BMP/LaTeX, supports command line for scripting, supports animation... What is really useful is that once you define all the points/lines/intersections/circles, you can easily change the location of one of the starting objects and the whole diagram will be accurately redrawn. |
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Inkscape is a popular open source drawing package. One feature that makes it particularly nice for drawing mathematical diagrams is that you can easily insert LaTeX output in your drawings. |
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These are my choices: |
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Live Geometry for Windows users. |
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I have been enjoying kseg. It is very quick to draw diagrams in kseg. After you draw the diagram you can drag the components around and the others will follow, retaining the same constraints. For example, in this diagram it appears that $NM$ is the perpendicular bisector of $PQ$:
And I can see if that still appears to be the case even after I move point $C$ to make a very different inscribed quadrilateral:
kseg also lets you define complicated loci, but I haven't tried that yet. |
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If you are a mathematician and wants to use such pictures for your notes or presentations using TeX files, use the pstricks package enhanced for use of easy by the package LaTeXdraw. Then there is a very useful linux program called xfig. |
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I use the programme CaRMetal. Here are a few screenshots: http://i34.tinypic.com/2vwcits.jpg http://i35.tinypic.com/oa42ts.jpg http://i35.tinypic.com/2lxfin8.jpg http://i35.tinypic.com/rble9l.jpg I guess most geometric constructions programmes are good, although I wouldn't recommend Kig. |
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I've used Smile by Satimage on my Mac. (Not SmileLab, just the free Smile. And not to be confused with PDF utility company "Smile on My Mac") Smile uses AppleScript for drawing. Some example files show an amazing facility for geometric drawings: named points, marked angles, primitives for things like barycenter and circumcenter, TeX-styled labels, etc. A fully-labeled illustration of the Euler Circle can be created with a few lines of script. Outputs to PDF, JPG, etc. I always have lots of trouble navigating the online documentation, so I know I'm not getting the full benefit of the program. Nevertheless, the ability to describe a drawing precisely with a script is what I need, and it's what the app delivers. |
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The free version of Cinderella is in some cases also a good choice. |
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gnuplotFeaturesI used InstallationYou can download it from sourceforge or from your package database if you are using a linux distribution. |
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A number of online drawing applications can be found on the following link: http://www.webanswers.com/_spen3/technology-computers/internet/web-sites/where-can-i-draw-online-e0ecca Thanks to stackexchange for this useful forum. |
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