cylinder - Generate cylinder

Syntax

Description

cylinder generates x-, y-, and z-coordinates of a unit cylinder. You can draw the cylindrical object using surf or mesh, or draw it immediately by not providing output arguments.

[X,Y,Z] = cylinder returns the x-, y-, and z-coordinates of a cylinder with a radius equal to 1. The cylinder has 20 equally spaced points around its circumference.

[X,Y,Z] = cylinder(r) returns the x-, y-, and z-coordinates of a cylinder using r to define a profile curve. cylinder treats each element in r as a radius at equally spaced heights along the unit height of the cylinder. The cylinder has 20 equally spaced points around its circumference.

[X,Y,Z] = cylinder(r,n) returns the x-, y-, and z-coordinates of a cylinder based on the profile curve defined by vector r. The cylinder has n equally spaced points around its circumference.

cylinder(axes_handle,...) plots into the axes with handle axes_handle instead of the current axes (gca).

cylinder(...), with no output arguments, plots the cylinder using surf.

Tips

cylinder treats its first argument as a profile curve. The resulting surface graphics object is generated by rotating the curve about the x-axis, and then aligning it with the z-axis.

Examples

Create a cylinder with randomly colored faces.

cylinder
axis square
h = findobj('Type','surface');
set(h,'CData',rand(size(get(h,'CData'))))

Generate a cylinder defined by the profile function 2+sin(t).

t = 0:pi/10:2*pi;
[X,Y,Z] = cylinder(2+cos(t));
surf(X,Y,Z)
axis square

See Also

sphere | surf

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