Origin 8.6 and OriginPro 8.6 from OriginLab

As a researcher in the medical sciences, I find it utterly imperative and also challenging to be able to capture the essence of often very complex findings and to express these findings in an accurate, readily understood, and captivating visual medium, such as a graph in a research paper or grant proposal, or a PowerPoint presentation for a scientific conference. Having the ability to present the results of my work in an effective manner is of paramount importance to me. For this reason, I have relied upon OriginLab's scientific and engineering graphics software for years. In fact, my introduction to OriginLab goes back to my graduate school years.

Recently, OriginLab released the 8.6 version of its Origin® and OriginPro® software programs. I have OriginPro 8.6, the deluxe version of Origin, and have had the opportunity to explore and work with it. As was the case with previous versions of Origin, the 8.6 version contains a wide array of ready-to-use graphs that admirably suit all needs relating to fundamental statistics, engineering, the natural and biomedical sciences. The redesigned panel enhances the accessibility to all tools available, including the project explorer/manager, without compromising the available space to the user. More specifically, on the left hand side of the screen, there is a very slim vertical ribbon which automatically expands once the user brings the pointer over it, and from which the user can quickly access the data spreadsheet or the graph or go back and forth between the two of them. Once the user decides to focus and spend time on either the graph area or the data spreadsheet, that expanded panel can be instantly reverted to the original slim ribbon by just moving the pointer away, allowing thus the user the full space of the screen for working on the graph area or the data area, respectively. Moreover, users may affix to that slim ribbon any number of buttons (small icons) of their favorite or most frequently used tools. All this, along with numerous other features, renders Origin 8.6 the ideal graphics software for those users who wish to use the software as intuitively as possible and with the least amount of time investment.

On the other hand, for those users, myself included, who need to design and create their own types of graphs, Origin 8.6 is an essential tool. More specifically, in my case, I work with large genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic datasets whose dimensions are often hundreds of rows by tens of thousands of columns. I use my own statistical software written in Matlab to analyze those very large datasets, and when the final results are obtained, I need to create high quality composite graphs for publication and presentation. Origin 8.6 has unparalleled capability when it comes to importing data from Matlab, Excel, or other popular formats; creating and working independently with many different layers; combining all those different layers into one final composite graph; and exporting the final graph into any of the 12 most popular image files, such as bitmap, tif, pdf, etc., with very high resolution (up to 1200 dpi).

As a recent example of the above, I have included two figures from my latest research paper on ovarian cancer prognosis, published in Cancer Informatics 2011:10 233-247.

Figure 1 shows two composite graphs (A and B), each one constituting a scatter plot and a bar graph. The advantage of this type of graph is that, on the one hand, it shows all of the data points, and that, on the other hand, provides a readily perceived colorful visual comparison between the two groups.

Figure 2, on the other hand, shows the same data but in a 3D scatter plot, thus affording the reader a three-dimensional perspective of the two groups of subjects and the relative positions of their respective clusters.

It should be pointed out that Origin 8.6 provides an interactive connection between the data and any graph based on it, such that if the user wishes to add new data, the graph automatically adjusts itself in response.

Origin 8.6 could have benefited from a more direct and specific capability to design and create diagrams that are not connected to, or based on, data, much like the one offered by Adobe Illustrator. In my view, this would render Origin 8.6 a more formidable competitor in this market. Finally, a more accessible ‘Undo’ function with a more complete functionality, i.e. one that allows the user to undo every action in every work area, would likewise have benefited this version.

Based on the extent of my experience and use of Origin 8.6, I think it constitutes not only an indispensable tool for my research but also the best available tool. I completely recommend it.