Origin 2018b Feature Highlights

Preview of Workbooks and Matrix books is now available in Project Explorer.

Windows File Explore preview is also now supported for Workbook and Matrix books that are saved to disk. For project level preview, if a workbook or matrix book was active at the time of saving the project, then the preview of that window will be used for the project.

Embed a multi-sheet matrix window as a sheet in your workbook, along with other relevant worksheets, graphs and analysis results.

Save your workbooks as an Analysis Template™ with the matrix included. The matrix sheets can store input data (e.g. when processing images) and/or output calculations that involve matrices.

The active window in the Origin interface is now marked by a customizable indicator for easy identification.

The color, style, and thickness of the border line can be set by the user and the indicator can be drawn outside the window, or just around the window title frame.

The Master Page feature allows you to apply common elements such as company logos and date stamps, to all graphs in your project.

Several enhancements have been made to the Master Page in this version:

• File: New: Master Page menu item for easy access
• Improved sample template with logo and string registers for date stamp, user name etc.
• Button rotates template between Landscape and Portrait modes
• Button to apply master page size to all project graphs with the same aspect ratio
• Option to save settings as default template for future projects

Graph previews in analysis dialogs can be dynamically resized in horizontal or vertical directions. This gives you a better view of the data and the results, and allows for better interaction with controls in the preview graph.

Change object properties of a single graph layer (symbol color, fonts, gridlines, etc.) and automatically apply customizations to other layers in a multi-layer graph.

• A new tab at the Page Level in Plot Details contains Common Display controls
• Apply Common Display of Layer, Plot, Axis Style and/or Axis Scale Properties to select layers
• Enable one-click Showing or Hiding of Plots with Same Name or Plot Index, in Plot Details or Object Manager
• Apply Common Display selections to All Layers in the window, All Layers Except ..., or Linked Layers
• Also works within Scatter Matrices for customizing plots of the same type (scatter plots or on-the-diagonal histograms and box plots)

Automatically apply Layer, Plot, or Axis customizations made to one graph layer, to other layers on the page.

Journals typically require a specific width for the graph image, such as 86 mm for single column and 178 mm for double column. In addition, at the scaled size, they may require text labels to be above a particular font size, and lines to be above a certain thickness.

In this version, we offer the following key features for preparing the Origin graph with the exact width specification:

• Resize graph page by specifying desired width, while maintaining aspect ratio (auto scale height when width is changed)
• Scale all elements on the page when resizing in order to maintain proportional balance in the graph
• Conversely, set element scale to some fixed factor when you want to maintain absolute size of elements
• Fit all graph layers to the available page area using user-specified margins, while maintaining layer relationships, relative size, and object scale

Once the graph has been scaled to the desired width then it can be exported in a vector or raster format for submission to the journal.

More options have been added to Custom Formats for worksheet columns and axis labels, such as "degrees, minutes, seconds (DMS)", and for displaying fractions, percents, etc.

Do your project files typically contain a large number of workbooks and worksheets? Tag "unwanted" sheets with "Exclude from Plotting Dialogs". Then the datasets in those sheets will not be displayed in Layer Contents, Plot Setup or other dialogs that list all available datasets.

A Distributed Batch Processing App is available for 2018b.

With this App, you can:

• Start with an Analysis Template that includes desired summary sheet
• Select multiple files
• Specify multiple cores up to the maximum available cores on your PC
• The files get distributed to multiple instances of Origin running on each core
• Let the batch process run in the background so you can continue with other work in Origin
• Check on progress at any time by re-launching the App
• Once all files are processed, generate a consolidated summary table for all files

• Distributed Batch Processing PRO
• 2D Smoother
• 3D Smoother PRO
• Toolbar Maker
• OPJ Packer
• Chromaticity Diagram
• Voronoi Diagram
• Fit Convolution PRO
• Rank Models PRO
• Factor Analysis PRO
• Dynamic Time Warping PRO

• Option to place axis title at the beginning/end of axis
• Axis arrow can be positioned outside of layer frame
• Support for bubble line thickness in Bubble Scale
• Allow data point label to be placed above error bar
• Support for English date format such as Aug.4 in Chinese/Japanese version

• Support special points for 3D XYZ bar graph
• Allow displaying reference lines on top of data
• Total label for 3D Stacked Column/Bar Plots
• Support line style customization for vector graph
• Enlarged graph using scale-in tool now supports multiple overlapped layers
• Connect Control in 3D Waterfall which enables smooth waterfall lines