MATLAB®

Rotate 3D — Interactive Rotation of 3-D Views

Enabling 3-D Rotation

You can easily rotate graphs to any orientation with the mouse. Rotation involves the reorientation of the axes and all the graphics objects it contains. Therefore none of the data defining the graphics objects is affected by rotation; instead the orientation of the x-, y-, and z-axes changes with respect to the viewer.

There are three ways to enable Rotate 3D mode:

• Select Rotate 3D from the Tools menu.

• Click the Rotate 3D icon in the figure toolbar .

• Execute the rotate3d command.

Once the mode is enabled, you press and hold the mouse button while moving the cursor to rotate the graph.

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Selecting Predefined Views

When Rotate 3D mode is enabled, you can control various rotation options from the right-click context menu.

You can rotate to predefined views on the right-click context menu:

• Reset to Original View — Reset to the default view (azimuth -37.5°, elevation 30°).

• Go to X-Y View — View graph along the z-axis (azimuth 0°, elevation 90°).

• Go to X-Z View — View graph along the y-axis (azimuth 0°, elevation 0°).

• Go to Y-Z View — View graph along the x-axis (azimuth 90°, elevation 0°).

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Rotation Style for Complex Graphs

You can select from two rotation styles on the right-click context menu's Rotation Options submenu:

• Plot Box Rotate — Display only the axes bounding box for faster rotation of complex objects. Use this option if the default Continuous Rotate style is unacceptably slow.

• Continuous Rotate — Display all graphics during rotation.

Axes Behavior During Rotation

You can select two types of behavior with respect to the aspect ratio of axes during rotation:

• Stretch-to-Fill Axes – Default axes behavior is optimized for 2-D plots. Graphs fit the rectangular shape of the figure.

• Fixed Aspect Ratio Axes – Maintains a fixed shape of objects in the axes as they are rotated. Use this setting when rotating 3-D plots.

The following pictures illustrate a sphere as it is rotated with Stretch-to-Fill Axes selected. Note that the sphere is not round.

The next picture shows how the Fixed Aspect Ratio Axes option results in a sphere that maintains its proper shape as it is rotated.

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Undo/Redo — Eliminating Mistakes

The figure Edit menu contains two items that enable you to undo any zoom, pan, or rotate operation.

Undo — Remove the effect of the last operation.

Redo — Perform again the last operation that you removed by selecting Undo.

For example, if you create a plot, zoom in, pan the view, and then undo the pan operation, the menu looks as follows:

You could now undo the previous zoom operation or redo the pan operation you just undid.

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Panning — Shifting Your View of the Graph

Annotating Graphs