Using 3D Surface Plots

Say i have 3 arrays X, Y, Z full of data which correspond to the x co-ordinate, y co-ordinate and a value at that point, is it possible to plot this as a surface plot?(Co-ordinates correspond to mesh points of a 2D structure). My understanding of how they are plotted is limited and the using the help for surface() did not help.

Thanks

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

I don’t know what your data are. If they are matrices, use the surf or mesh functions. The scatteredInterpolant function is another option. If they are vectors, I would use plot3 or scatter3.

[Waseem Aldeek]

Thanks for your reply, The 3 arrays are all the same size (1 x 212), The X array contains x co-ordinates, the Y array y co-ordinates and the Z array arbitrary values. I wish my plot to reflect the Z values at each co-ordinate and perhaps change in color depending on the value. Is this not possible using surf? does it only use matrix data to plot?

Thanks gain!

[Star Strider]

The surf function only plots matrices. If your vectors are set up to be gridded (appropriately repeating values in your ‘x’ and ‘y’ vectors), you could reshape all of them to work with surf. If they are essentially random, then scatter3 would likely be best. If they are random and you want to display them as a surface, use scatteredInterpolant.

[Waseem Aldeek]

Thanks alot for your help, much appreciated!

[Star Strider]

My pleasure!