Re: Plotting a curve in space
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg1944] Re: Plotting a curve in space
- From: pehowland at taz.dra.hmg.gb ()
- Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 00:08:32 -0400
- Organization: Defence Research Agency
In article <DDDr8w.B4r at wri.com>, luke at boombox.arc.nasa.gov (Luke Dones) writes: |>Hi -- I'd like to plot the orbit of a satellite which has |>been calculated by numerical integration. The data is basically |>an array of time (equally spaced) and Cartesian position |>coordinates x, y, and z. So far I've just been plotting xy and |>xz projections of the data with a canned package for 2-D graphics. |> |>It seemed that Mathematica (which I'm not very familiar with) |>should be able to plot the orbit in 3 dimensions. But none of |>the routines mentioned in Wolfram's book seem to do exactly what |>I want. The output I want would look something like the curve in |>3-dimensions produced by ParametricPlot3D, except that I don't have |>an explicit form for x, y, and z as a function of time. Luke - it seems you want to plot 4D data, ie. coordinates of the form {time,x,y,z}, which obviously isn't easy! However, if you can live with just plotting the satellite's Cartesian coordinates, then what you want is easily achievable. First of all generate a list of your Cartesian coordinates of the form: data = {{x1,y1,z1}, {x2,y2,z2}, ..., {xn,yn,zn}} and then load in the standard package Graphics`Graphics3D` as follows: <<Graphics`Graphics3D` then simply use ScatterPlot3D[data] or ScatterPlot3D[data, PlotJoined->True] to display your satellite's track. If you are very keen you could then use the graphics primitive Text[expr, {x,y,z}] in order to label each point with the time coordinate - see P.470 of "the book" for examples of using this. Hope this helps, Paul Howland Defence Research Agency UK.