mesh

Arguments

Z

a real matrix defining the surface height. It can not be omitted. The Z data is a m-by-n matrix.

X, Y

two real matrices : always set together, these data defines a new standard grid. This new X and Y components of the grid must match Z dimensions (see description below).

color

an optional real matrix defining a color value for each (X(j),Y(i)) point of the grid (see description below).

<GlobalProperty>

this optional argument represents a sequence of couple statements {PropertyName,PropertyValue} that defines global objects' properties applied to all the curves created by this plot. For a complete view of the available properties (see GlobalProperty).

<axes_handle>

this optional argument forces the plot to appear inside the selected axes given by axes_handle rather than the current axes (see gca).

Description

mesh draws a parametric surface using a rectangular grid defined by X and Y coordinates (if {X,Y} are not specified, this grid is determined using the dimensions of the Z matrix); at each point of this grid, a z coordinate is given using the Z matrix. mesh is based on the surf command with default option color_mode = white index (inside the current colormap) and color_flag = 0.

Data entry specification :

In this paragraph and to be more clear, we won't mention GlobalProperty optional arguments as they do not interfere with entry data (except for "Xdata", "Ydata" and "Zdata" property, see GlobalProperty). It is assumed that all those optional arguments could be present too.

If Z is the only matrix specified, mesh(Z) plots the matrix Z versus the grid defined by 1:size(Z,2) along the x axis and 1:size(Z,1) along the y axis.

Remarks

To enable the transparency mode you should set the color_mode option to 0.

Examples

[X,Y]=meshgrid(-1:.1:1,-1:.1:1);
Z=X.^2-Y.^2;
xtitle('$\huge z=x^2-y^2$');
mesh(X,Y,Z);

See also

• surf — 3D surface plot
• meshgrid — Create matrices or 3-D arrays from vectors replicated in 2 or 3 dimensions
• plot2d — 2D plot
• LineSpec — to quickly customize the lines appearance in a plot
• GlobalProperty — customizes the objects appearance (curves, surfaces...) in a plot or surf command

History