Scilab: from Theory to Practice - I. Fundamentals E-BOOK

This book provides a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to the powerful,open source computing environment of Scilab. It will teach you all the basic Scilab concepts you need for computing, analyzing and visualizing data, for developing algorithms, and creating models. Based on the latest versions of Scilab, it focuses on the most recent recommended practices. It offers a lot of advice and words of caution to help you take full advantage of Scilab’s capabilities, and efficiently create your own projects. Best practices have been certified by Dr. Claude Gomez, co-founder and advisor of Scilab Enterprises.

After performing a quick overview of the software, three parts will successively deal with computing, programming and creating plots. The first one shows you how to perform and optimize all the mathematical calculations that an engineer may come across. The second one examines how to go beyond the simple calculations and study complex systems with scripting and interface building. The last one gives you a thorough description of Scilab's numerous graphics capabilities.

Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Table Of Contents:

Getting Started

1. Preview of Scilab

2. The Console

3. The Graphical Interface

4. Inputs/Outputs

5. Finding Information on Scilab

6. Downloading and Installing Scilab

Computing
7. Numbers and First Calculations

8. Variables, Constants and Types

9. Matrices

10. Booleans

11. Character Strings and Text Files

12. Other Common Types

13. Calculation Examples

Programming

14. Scripts

15. Control Flow Statements

16. Functions

17. Advanced Programming

18. Example: Programming a Sudoku Game

Creating Plots

19. Graphics Entities and Windows

20. Two-dimensional Plot

21. Three-dimensional Plots

22. Other Two-dimensional Geometrical Elements

23. To Go Even Further

24. Two Case Studies: a Pendulum and Comet Orbit