Three-Dimensional Plotting - Untitled
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#### 15.1.2 Three-Dimensional Plotting

The function `mesh` produces mesh surface plots. For example,

         tx = ty = linspace (-8, 8, 41)';
         [xx, yy] = meshgrid (tx, ty);
         r = sqrt (xx .^ 2 + yy .^ 2) + eps;
         tz = sin (r) ./ r;
         mesh (tx, ty, tz);

produces the familiar “sombrero” plot shown in fig:mesh. Note the use of the function `meshgrid` to create matrices of X and Y coordinates to use for plotting the Z data. The `ndgrid` function is similar to `meshgrid`, but works for N-dimensional matrices.

Figure 15.5: Mesh plot.

The `meshc` function is similar to `mesh`, but also produces a plot of contours for the surface.

The `plot3` function displays arbitrary three-dimensional data, without requiring it to form a surface. For example

         t = 0:0.1:10*pi;
         r = linspace (0, 1, numel (t));
         z = linspace (0, 1, numel (t));
         plot3 (r.*sin(t), r.*cos(t), z);

displays the spiral in three dimensions shown in fig:plot3.

Figure 15.6: Three dimensional spiral.

Finally, the `view` function changes the viewpoint for three-dimensional plots.

— Function File: mesh (x, y, z)

> Plot a mesh given matrices x, and y from `meshgrid` and a matrix z corresponding to the x and y coordinates of the mesh. If x and y are vectors, then a typical vertex is (x(j), y(i), z(i,j)). Thus, columns of z correspond to different x values and rows of z correspond to different y values.

> See also: meshgrid, contour.

— Function File: meshc (x, y, z)

> Plot a mesh and contour given matrices x, and y from `meshgrid` and a matrix z corresponding to the x and y coordinates of the mesh. If x and y are vectors, then a typical vertex is (x(j), y(i), z(i,j)). Thus, columns of z correspond to different x values and rows of z correspond to different y values.

> See also: meshgrid, mesh, contour.

— Function File: [xx, yy, zz] = meshgrid (x, y, z)
— Function File: [xx, yy] = meshgrid (x, y)
— Function File: [xx, yy] = meshgrid (x)

> Given vectors of x and y and z coordinates, and returning 3 arguments, return three dimensional arrays corresponding to the x, y, and z coordinates of a mesh. When returning only 2 arguments, return matrices corresponding to the x and y coordinates of a mesh. The rows of xx are copies of x, and the columns of yy are copies of y. If y is omitted, then it is assumed to be the same as x, and z is assumed the same as y.

> See also: mesh, contour.

— Function File: [y1, y2, ..., yn] = ndgrid (x1, x2, ..., xn)
— Function File: [y1, y2, ..., yn] = ndgrid (x)

> Given n vectors x1, ... xn, `ndgrid` returns n arrays of dimension n. The elements of the ith output argument contains the elements of the vector xi repeated over all dimensions different from the ith dimension. Calling ndgrid with only one input argument x is equivalent of calling ndgrid with all n input arguments equal to x:

> [y1, y2, ..., yn] = ndgrid (x, ..., x)

> See also: meshgrid.

— Function File: plot3 (args)

> Produce three-dimensional plots. Many different combinations of arguments are possible. The simplest form is

>               plot3 (x, y, z)

> in which the arguments are taken to be the vertices of the points to be plotted in three dimensions. If all arguments are vectors of the same length, then a single continuous line is drawn. If all arguments are matrices, then each column of the matrices is treated as a separate line. No attempt is made to transpose the arguments to make the number of rows match.

> If only two arguments are given, as

>               plot3 (x, c)

> the real and imaginary parts of the second argument are used as the y and z coordinates, respectively.

> If only one argument is given, as

>               plot3 (c)

> the real and imaginary parts of the argument are used as the y and z values, and they are plotted versus their index.

> Arguments may also be given in groups of three as

>               plot3 (x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2, ...)

> in which each set of three arguments is treated as a separate line or set of lines in three dimensions.

> To plot multiple one- or two-argument groups, separate each group with an empty format string, as

>               plot3 (x1, c1, "", c2, "", ...)

> An example of the use of `plot3` is

>                  z = [0:0.05:5];
>                  plot3 (cos(2*pi*z), sin(2*pi*z), z, ";helix;");
>                  plot3 (z, exp(2i*pi*z), ";complex sinusoid;");

> See also: plot.

— Function File: view (azimuth, elevation)
— Function File: view (dims)
— Function File: [azimuth, elevation] = view ()

> Set or get the viewpoint for the current axes.