One of the most common uses of computer algebra systems is of course plotting. At the moment Sage does not have much in the way of intrinsic support for visualization. However, there are some very powerful open source programs for visualization that you can use from within Sage. The goal of this chapter is to explain how to set them up. The main tool we will be using is VTK, http://www.vtk.org. VTK is an amazing visualization tool, and the results that can be achieved are incredible. It is probably one of the best visualization tools in existence, and can probably do anything you might want a visualization tool to do. However, because it can do so much, it is a bit tricky to use potentially. Luckily there are a few tools for using VTK from within python that make it easier to get started. The ones we will focus on are MavaVi, http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/, and easyviz.
