Why does the QUIVER command in MATLAB display the wrong vector length?

When I execute the following code in MATLAB:

quiver(0,0,3,0); 

the resulting plot does not display an arrow from (0,0) to (3,0).

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This enhancement has been incorporated in Release 2006a (R2006a). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:

The QUIVER function in MATLAB autoscales vectors it draws, as described in the documentation.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/quiver.html

As this indicates, you can obtain correct lengths by using a fifth argument, a scaling parameter. The following code displays the expected arrow from (0,0) to (3,0):

quiver(0,0,3,0,0);
quiver(0,0,3,0,'AutoScale','off')

Alternatively, one of the following three commands will work:

quiver(0,0,3,0,1);
quiver(0,0,3,0,'AutoScaleFactor',1)

The latter 2 are autoscaled and a scaling factor of 1 is applied.