Plotting a parabola: dimension too large message

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepgflibrary{fpu}%----- this
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[  scale=.01]
\draw[domain=-30:30,
/pgf/fpu,/pgf/fpu/output format=fixed ] plot (\x,{(\x)^2});
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


I used a two year old suggestion of yours to try to plot y = x^2 with domain = -30:30 as shown above. But I get the dimension too large message that your response above averted with a different math function.

Any help would be appreciated.

egreg and Jake are right. In this case you don't need fpu

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[ y=0.01cm,x=0.2cm]
\draw[domain=-30:30 ] plot (\x,{(\x)^2});
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


Explanations :

With TeX, you can't manipulate dim > 16 384 pt or 5.75m so the code

￼\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw (0,0)--(600,0);
\end{tikzpicture}


gives Dimension too large but TeX can manipulate big integers < 2^31 - 1

An idea is to use the code

￼￼￼\begin{tikzpicture}[x=0.01 cm]
\draw (0,0)--(600 cm,0);
\end{tikzpicture}


but you get another Dimension too large because 600 cm is a length > 575 cm

Good is the next code

￼\begin{tikzpicture}[x=0.01 cm]
\draw (0,0)--(600,0);
\end{tikzpicture}


600 is a number and the length used is 6 cm

• Avoid the minimal class for examples. – egreg Jul 27 '13 at 8:19
• @egreg yes I agree with you. I used the code of the question but I forgot to change the class – Alain Matthes Jul 27 '13 at 10:32