Any (free-ish) software to draw locii?

Question

[Caution: vague, and possibly stupid, post] Just wondering if anyone knows of some freeware or shareware software that'll draw the locii (2D will do :-) ) of geometric shapes? This is really just for interest sake - I have no particular use in mind. Could be used for seeing the path that an object (2D shapes) take when sharing (say) a common pivot point. Eg(maybe not a good one): a a square and a triangle with a pin fixing them together. What path do they describe when rotated wrt the pin? Is this CAD type stuff?

Why the heck I asking this I don't know - it just seemed in could be useful - for some purpose I haven't yet thought off :-)

I did some googling etc and found plenty of chemistry/NMR type software - but that's not quite what I on about - I think!

Aidan Karley · Accepted Answer

Sounds like a job for GNUPlot to me. Available for most platforms between Abacus and BlueGene (may require additional memory on early-model Abacii); write your equations defining the locus in a reasonably intelligible mathematical scripting language, add further commands to set the type of output (VGA-16 screen, PGN image, PostScript page ...), the range of the locus to plot, co-ordinate form (Cartesian 2-d and 3-d, Polar, triangular diagrams too IIRC) ... Does parametric equations too (e.g. parabola as equal distance from a line and a particular point, for all positions (the implicit parameter) along that line).

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(The price is right, too.)

bomb#20 · Answer

This should keep you amused for a while. :-)

Wolfram Research Mathematica v6.0

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[ISO image 535 MB]

You will need Winrar to unpack the archives and also software to handle an iso image. Either burn the iso to disk (

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) or mount on a virtual cd drive with something like Deamon Tools. (

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Andy Burns · Answer

Plus a skull and cross-bones and a parrot on your shoulder?

John Rumm · Answer

How exactly is a £2000+ bit of software freeware?

PeterK · Answer

Google on kinematics/mechanical simulation/2d motion with software/download etc. gets many hits.  has a demo downloadPeterK

dave · Answer

Ah that sound more like it. I wanted something with which I didn't actually have to think :-) (Well only a little bit). My master plan was to draw the shapes to scale, mark the pivot/rotation points, and then just drag things around to see what happens! Piece of cake eh!

Any (free-ish) software to draw locii?

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