3D
plot –
Part 2
Modeling Surfaces, Meshes and 3D variations
The 3D plot functions intended for plotting
meshes and surfaces 'mesh'
and 'surf',
and their
several variants 'meshc',
'meshz', 'surfc', and 'surfl', take
multiple optional input arguments, the most simple form being 'mesh(z)' or 'surf(z)', where z
represents a matrix.
|
Usually,
tridimensional
curves are represented by the values of z-coordinates
samples on a grid
of (x,y) values.
Thus, to create a surface
or
3D
plot we first need to generate a grid of (x,y) coordinates
and find the height (z-coordinate) of the surface at each of the grid
points. Matlab provides the function 'meshgrid' to create
a grid of points over a specified range.
|
Meshgrid
Suppose that you want to plot the function z = x2 – 10y
+ 2 over the domain 0 ≤ x ≤ 4 and 0 ≤ y ≤ 4. To do so, we first take
several points in the domain, say 25 points, as shown in this Fig.:
We can create two matrices x and y, each of size 5 x 5, and write the
xy-coordinates of each point in these matrices. We can then evaluate z
with the command z = x.^2 – 10*y + 2.
However, creating the two matrices x and y is much easier with the meshgrid command.
% creates
vectors x and y, from 0 to 4
vx = 0 : 4
vy = vx
% creates
meshgrid to be used in 3D plot
[x,y] = meshgrid(vx,vy)
The commands shown above generate the 25 points shown in the figure.
All we need to do is generate two vectors, vx and vy, to define the region of interest
and distribution or
density of our grid points. Also, the two vectors need not
be either same sized or linearly spaced. It is very important to
understand the use of meshgrid.
Matlab response is as follows:
vx =
0
1
2
3 4
vy =
0
1
2
3 4
x =
0
1
2
3 4
0
1
2
3 4
0
1
2
3 4
0
1
2
3 4
0
1
2
3 4
y =
0
0
0
0 0
1
1
1
1 1
2
2
2
2 2
3
3
3
3 3
4
4
4
4 4
|
See
the columns
of x and the rows
of y. When a surface is plotted with the 'mesh(z)' command
(where z is a matrix), the tickmarks
on the x and y axes do not indicate the domain of z but the row and column indices
of the z-matrix. Typing 'mesh(x,y,z)'
or 'surf(x,y,z)'
(where x and y are vectors used by 'meshgrid' to create a grid), result
in the surface plot of z, with x and y values shown along the
respective axes.
|
The folowing script could be an example of how tho use the 'meshgrid', 'plot3', 'meshc', and 'surfc' commands.
We'll 3D plot the following surface:
with this script:
% clears
command window, clears variables and closes figures
clc; clear; close all
% defines
vectors x and y
vx = -4 : 0.2: 4;
vy = -3 : 0.2: 3;
% calculates
the necessary grid
[x,y] = meshgrid(vx, vy);
% calculates
z and avoids a null denominator adding 'eps'
% (eps is the
least possible number in Matlab)
z = x .* y .* (x.^2 - y.^2) ./ (x.^2 + y.^2 + eps);
% generates
the first figure using 'plot3'
figure
plot3(x,y,z)
grid on
% generates
the second figure using 'meshc' to include the
% contour in
the figure, and rotates the figure with 'view'
figure
meshc(x,y,z)
view(-37, 15)
% generates
the third 3D figure using 'surfc' to include the
% contour in
the image, and also rotates the figure with 'view'
figure
surfc(x,y,z)
view(-47, 25)
And the generated results are:
Do you like it?
Use the instruction 'rotate3d
on' to manipulate the view angle of your plot. Include it
in your script or type it in the command window to change the view with
your mouse over the figure...
From
'3D Plot part 2' to
home
From
'3D Plot
part 2' to 3D Main

|
|