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3D plot of globe (map of world)?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg67882] 3D plot of globe (map of world)?
• From: liu at vtaix.cc.vt.edu (Xiangdong Liu)
• Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 05:59:07 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: Virginia Tech
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Hi!

Not sure if this question has been asked before but does anyone know how
to make a 3D plot of the world or globe?  Or at least the map of a continent
on a 3D globe?

With the `WorldPlot` package, you can plot 2D world map or country/continent
maps, with various 3D-to-2D projections.  Yet, Mathematica does not seem to
provide a means to easily plot the map data in 3D (well as far as I know).

Mathematica does allow the per-country map data (polygons) to be referenced
but does not allow (as far as I can see) map data of a continent to be
referenced collectively.  I am looking therefore into if I can do the
tedious country by country plots and then combine them.  Yet, the map data
for some countries, such as US, consists multiple disjoint polygons.  But
if you use ListPlot or ListPlot3D, Mathematica connects all polygons as if
they were one, adding superfluous edges.  Manually separating map data for
such countries into multiple indpendent lists and plotting the lists
separately and then combining them, whew, seems to be too tedious to be
doable.

Thanks!
 

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: 3D plot of globe (map of world)?
    • From: "Chris Chiasson" <chris@chiasson.name>