How to plot UNEQUAL x -y axis for 3D surface plot

Hello everyone,

I have data in the form of x,y, z that I want to plot as a surface plot. For x I have time points, eg. x = [0 2 5 7 9 11 15] and for 4 different conditions measurements were taken at y = [200 400 900 2100]. To each time point z corresponds to each of the 4 conditions so the matrix I have in excel looks a bit like this:

x y z

200 0 1626,8467

400 0 1259,2767

900 0 1019,4433

2100 0 741,7067

200 0,2857 1616,9833

400 0,2857 1230,79

900 0,2857 1018,78

2100 0,2857 792,2667

200 0,7143 1403,5167

400 0,7143 932,41

900 0,7143 624,98

2100 0,7143 427,3167

I want the plot to kinda look like this plot from SigmaPlot. I've been using this program for plotting. But since I want to change the colormap to a perceptually uniform colormap that is not availabe in my version, I'm trying to move to Matlab.

I've tried a few different methods to plot this as surface in matlab but yet did not get a nice result. I've been mostly orientating myself on this document:

%EXAMPLE.M
%Example of 3-D plot in Matlab
%Experimental data isn't always spaced perfectly, so neither is
%the data for this example
%Here's the x data
x=[0 1.1 2 3.2 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2.1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2 3.1 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.1 3 4.1 5 6 7 8 9
0 1.1 2 3.2 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2.1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2 3.1 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.1 3 4.1 5 6 7 8 9];
%Here's the y data
%a
y=[0 1.1 2 3.2 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2.1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2 3.1 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.1 3 4.1 5 6 7 8 9
0 1.1 2 3.2 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2.1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 1 2 3.1 4 5 6 7 8 9
.1 1 2.1 3 4.1 5 6 7 8 9]';
%Here's the z data
z=[0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0
0 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 0
0 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 1 0
0 1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 0
0 1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 0
0 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 1 0
0 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 0
0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0];
%There are several ways to do 3-D plots, here are a few
%plot3(x,y,z)
%mesh(x,y,z)
surf(x,y,z)
%Note: Matlab is case sensitive, so X and x aren't the same thing.
%mesh(x,y,z)
%end EXAMPLE.M

1)

with surf (x,y,z) I can plot a surface I want, but as far as I understand, surf only takes matrices of equal dimensions on x and y ?

So I only get as far as 4x4 since my x only has 4 values, that keep on repeating. Also the surface is plotted in the wrong plane.

2) trying to take in more data points I transformed my x, y and z data to 10x10 matrices. I did this manually in the workspace, as I haven't found the proper code for transformation yet. Again plotting with surf (x,y,z)

Now this looks closer to what I want, but I guess due to the matrix dimensions, the point connections and planes are wrong.

Can anyone offer me a solution for my data organisation?

Answer 1

[Hrishikesh Borate]

Hi,

I understand that you are trying to plot data with unequal x and y axes. You can use meshgrid to organize the data. For other plotting options refer to surface and mesh plots.

[Theresa M.]

Thank you, that helped.

[Theresa M.]

I just found, it has been answered before:

Surface Plot to Nonuniform Data