Plotting 3D Data¶

This is where SurfacePlot3D really shines: providing an easy entry point for your custom 3D data set. Depending on the type of data you’re starting with, there are a number of different arguments you can pass into the PlotData function.

Plotting a 2D Array of Values¶

This is the easiest possible case. Let’s say we’ve got a 2D array of doubles set up:

double[,] arrayOfPoints = new double[10, 15];
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
for (int j = 0; j < 15; j++)
{
arrayOfPoints[i, j] = Math.Cos(Math.Abs(i) + Math.Abs(j)) * (Math.Abs(i) + Math.Abs(j));
}
}


Now all we have to do is plug it into our PlotData function:

PlotData(arrayOfPoints);


Great! But you should notice how only passing in an array of points will give you automatic indexing: that is, your x and y axes will be indexed from 0 to n-1, where n is the number of points in either dimension.

If you have a function, like say you wanted to plot the same function as above, but you wanted to plot 20 and 25 points between 0 and 1 in each the x and y axes, respectively. For this, we also need to define a double array of the corresponding size for each axis. We might set up such a plot like so:

int N = 20;
int M = 25;

double[] xArray = double[N];
double[] yArray = double[M];
double[,] zArray = double[N, M]; // Notice how the size of the array in each dimension has to match up with the size of the corresponding "axes" array!
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
double x = i / N;
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++)
{
double y = j / M;
arrayOfPoints[i, j] = Math.Cos(Math.Abs(x) + Math.Abs(y)) * (Math.Abs(x) + Math.Abs(y));
}
}


Finally, we’ll plot each of the arrays:

PlotData(zArray, xArray, yArray);


Perfect!

Plotting an Array of 3DPoint Objects¶

Since the SurfacePlot3D library works primary through Point3D arrays, this is the most straightforward plot. You can plot a 2-dimensional array of Point3D objects by simply passing the array into the PlotData function:

PlotData(point3DArray);