Plotting parametric curves

I am trying to plot some parametric curves, however I always get an an error saying "Dimension is too large". Is there any way to fix this?

\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=.2]
\draw[very thin,color=gray,step=.5cm,dashed] (-8,-8) grid (4,4);
\draw[<->, blue] (-8,0) -- (4,0) node[below right] {$x$};
\draw[<->, blue] (0,-8) -- (0,4) node[left] {$y$};
\draw [red, thick,  domain=-10:1.1, samples=40]
plot ({\x^3-3*\x}, {3*\x^2-9} );
\end{tikzpicture}

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The numbers are too big, just switch to pgfplots and it would work just fine. – percusse Aug 3 '12 at 14:23

\documentclass[11pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{tkz-fct}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1.5]
\tkzInit[xmin=-5,xmax=5,xstep=2,ymin=-10,ymax=4,ystep=2]
\tkzGrid[sub]
\tkzAxeX[step=2]
\tkzAxeY[step=2]
\tkzFctPar[samples=400,domain=-pi:pi]{t**3-3*t}{3*t**2-9}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

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The problem was with the line

\draw [red, thick,  domain=-10:1.1, samples=40]
plot ({\x^3-3*\x}, {3*\x^2-9} );


In particular, your domain=-10:1.1 was too big. You could just change it, or even better, use pgfplots for your task, which is what I've demonstrated below.

Note the use of \pgfplotsset to set global settings in the preamble.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}

\pgfplotsset{every axis/.append style={
axis x line=middle,    % put the x axis in the middle
axis y line=middle,    % put the y axis in the middle
axis line style={<->,color=blue}, % arrows on the axis
xlabel={$x$},          % default put x on x-axis
ylabel={$y$},          % default put y on y-axis
}}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
xmin=-8,xmax=4,
ymin=-8,ymax=4,
grid=both,
]
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

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Thank you, so it seems as it is limited on the size of graphs it can handle. I thought that something was wrong with my code. Thanks again. – Tony Aug 3 '12 at 16:23

With PSTricks just for fun!

\documentclass[pstricks,border=12pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{pst-plot}
\psset{unit=5mm,plotpoints=1000,algebraic}
\begin{document}
\begin{pspicture}(-20,-12)(21,21)
\psaxes[Dx=5,Dy=5]{->}(0,0)(-20,-12)(20,20)[$x$,0][$y$,90]
\psparametricplot[linecolor=blue,linewidth=2\pslinewidth]{-3}{3}{t^3-3*t|3*t^2-9}
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}


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