adrian@milton.u.washington.edu (Adrian Mariano) (06/13/91)
Hmmm. Somewhere along the way, the documentation for my plot3d
program got lost. As the moderator noted, the documentation included
within the program isn't really adequate. Here is the brief
documentation file which was meant to be included:
Plot3d
by Adrian Mariano
and Karl Crary
Copyright 1991 by Adrian Mariano
You may use and distribute this program as much as you like so long as you do
not charge for this service. I am not liable for failure of this program to
perform in any way.
Please send any comments, patches, or improvements to me at:
adrian@milton.u.washington.edu
Plot3d is a program for plotting 3 dimensional surfaces specified via one of
the three standard coordinate systems.
It uses a command driven interface with the following commands:
type <type><dependent var>
Selects coordinate system for plotting. The three available coordinate
systems are: cartesian, a right handed orthoginal coordinate system with
x, y and z as the variables; cylindrical, polar coordinate system with r
the orthogonal distance from the z axis, theta the angle around the z
axis, and z the distance along the z axis; and spherical, where rho is
the distance from the origin, theta is the angle around the z axis, and
phi is the angle between the z axis and the point.
The <type> above should be one of cart, cylinder, or sphere.
The dependent variable is the one which depends on the other two. It
should be specified immediately after the type (without spaces).
The default is cartz, which allows you to plot surfaces of the form
z=f(x,y).
To plot phi=f(rho, theta) in spherical coordinates, use the command
'type spherephi'
plot <function>
Plots the function with the current settings. The function should be
specified WITHOUT an equals sign.
So x^2+y^2 is ok. z=x^2+y^2 is not ok.
Functions use the standard operations, +, -, /, *, and ^ (for exponents).
e give 2.71828..., and pi produces the value pi.
The '*' for multiplication may be omitted.
The following functions are supported:
[arc]sin, [arc]cos, [arc]tan, [arc]sinh, [arc]cosh, [arc]tanh
ln, log, abs
replot
plots the same function again with the current settings (which may be
different from when the function was last plotted).
show
displays current plotting parameters
xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, zmin, zmax <number>
set the region to display on screen.
<var>start, <var>end, <var>steps
The program maintains separate values for the ranges over when the
independent variables should vary, and the number of steps to take over
this range for each coordinate system. You can set these values for the
current coordinate system only by using these commands, where <var> is
the variable you want to affect.
aspect <number>
Set aspect ratio of your monitor
distance <number>
Set perspective distance from image. Use 0 for no perspective. Distance
is measured in multiples of the image depth (direction in the dimension
perpendicular to your monitor).
spin, tip <number>
Set view angle in degrees. Spin rotates the image around the z axis, tip
rotates the image around the y axis.
LIMITATIONS
Selecting more than about 55 x 55 resolution results in weird behavior for
reasons I don't understand.
EXAMPLES
Here is an example session that produces a few interesting graphs:
plot sin(x)
plot sin(y)
plot sin(x)*sin(y)
type cylinderr
plot 2.5
plot sin(2z)
plot sin(3z)+.5
type sphererho
plot 2.5sin(3theta)
thetasteps 50
phisteps 50
replot