how to draw phase plots?
You can solve ODEs numerically. There are many methods that you can program yourself in your language of choice, or you can use one of the solvers available in:
- Python, possibly in a Jupyter notebook
- Sage
- SciLab
- Octave
- Maxima
- Mathematica
- Maple
- Many othersMany others
Once you have the solution (for the chosen initial condition), you can plot it using Gnuplot or some of the pieces of software listed above.
Which is the best software
According to which criteria? The first 5 options in the list above are free, powerful, flexible and allow you to both solve the equations and plot the trajectory. Some swear for the (paid) Mathematica and Maple being the easiest to use, but with a template, Python, for instance, is not difficult either and might have more to offer in the long term, given its large number of packages. Sage can do things like symbolic computation, if that's a direction you'd like to go. So, really, there's no absolute best, it depends on your boundary conditions.
are phase plots and phase portraits the same?
Yes, though "phase portrait" is probably more common. Also, often these terms are used to denote not a plot of a single trajectory, but one with a number of different trajectories to characterize the phase space.