Can anybody tell me what exactly is the contour plot and how to draw them using gnuplot. I am trying to slove 2-D eular equation for shock reflection problem. I have data file with columns x,y, u(x,y) at final time t. I trid "splot" for ploting the data file, but I could not get the reported graphs in various research papers. Can somebody tell me what should I do?

regards Ritesh

At the gnuplot prompt, type "help contours".

Contour plot allows you to visualize the level curves.

For three dimensional plot ie(let f be a function of two variables) and let c be a constant. The set of all (x,y) in the plane such that f(x,y) = c is called a level curve of f with value c.

You can think of a mountain or hill and slicing horizontally and mapping each of those slices. This gives you some idea of the slope. The closer the lines are the steeper the slope.

Hope this helps,

~Dr. Tiger

Thanks for the information, actually I have got the method through which we can draw contour plots using datafiles in gnuplot. following is the link http://www.gnuplot.info/faq/faq.html...00000000000000 It work for me. Hope sombody else find it useful.