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How show axes labels with AxesOrigin->{0,0,0} in 3D?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg119487] How show axes labels with AxesOrigin->{0,0,0} in 3D?
  • From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
  • Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 06:23:58 -0400 (EDT)
  • Reply-to: murray at math.umass.edu

Since Mathematica 7, 3D graphics has allowed the AxesOrigin option so 
that, for example, the axes can go through the origin {0,0,0}, just like 
the way that mathematicians (or at least college calculus teachers) do 
it and teach their students to do it.

That works, but...

If you include an AxesLabel option, the labels do not appear, e.g., from:

    Plot3D[x^2 - y^2, {x, -2, 2}, {y, -2, 2},
           AxesOrigin -> {0, 0, 0},
           AxesLabel -> {x, y, z},
           BoxRatios -> {1, 1, 1}, Boxed -> False]

Is there some way to make the axes labels appear (other than to add them 
manually using the Text function, say in an Epilog)?

[And is this just another instance of WRI protracted stubbornness even 
in admitting that having 3D axes emanating from the origin is a 
permissible way of handling 3D graphics?  (Scientific/engineering 
convention seems overwhelmingly to favor axes along edges of a 3D 
graphic, whereas in math -- as I suggested, at least in multivariable 
calculus -- axes emanating from the origin is the norm.)

-- 
Murray Eisenberg                     murray at math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower      phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts                413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street            fax   413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305


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