I am new to this forum thing so here goes.I am doing some modules on complex waveforms and is a bit lost how to calculate the complex waveform by adding a fundamental and lets say 3rd harmonic wave forms together. Do I have to physically determine each point on the graph by using different time intervals or can I use a computer program and wich one.

 

You can do it by hand but it is very time consuming.

You can use Matlab or a graph plotting software.

 

Hey, when I was a student, we had to make all our plots by hand, uphill, through the snow, while holding the two sticks of candy we got for Christmas. And we had it good.

I love python for this type of work, along with matplotlib and numpy, two add-on libraries that have array-processing and plotting features. Here's a thread that points to a document that can give you a better idea of what these features can do. Python has complex number support built-in, so doing this stuff is a piece of cake.

If you post an example problem and I somehow remember to get back here, I'll post some example code that shows how to attack the problem.