plot_ellipse

Draw ellipse using major, minor, inc and phase.

Description

It is common to find routines to plot ellipses without the ellipse phase angle parameter.
Phase angle provides important information in many applications...

This function also allows ellipse to be drawn at different z levels.

Three ways to show ellipse phase is shown in the screenshot:

plot_ellipse(2,1,45,20);
axis equal
hold on
plot_ellipse(2,1,45,20,[0 -2],'r',2);
plot_ellipse(2,1,45,20,[0 -4],'k',3);

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.0 (R12)

[Duane Hanselman]

Image does not display in Firefox or IE. What is inclination? How is that different than phase? How is this function different than the other ellipse plotting functions in MATLAB Central.

[M MA]

You are right about the screenshot. I chnaged for png. If you dont know the difference between ellipse inclination and ellipse phase I will tell you:
Inclination is the positive angle between the major axis and x axis.
Phase is the time (angle) needed for the ellipse to reach the maximum value.
As you may know an ellipse is created by adding to sinusoidal functions with the same frequency. What makes ellipses different from each other is the amplitude and phase of the sinusoids. When two functions with four variables are added the final function is a function of four variables also! Thus sinusoids'amplitudes and phases can be converted in ellipse major axis, eccentricity (or minor axis), inclination and phase.
Whatever, I just dont even know what is an ellipse without phase. There is no such thing !!

[D C]

Limited. What is that arrow. Narrow scope.

[Harper Simmons]

This function is useful for plotting tidal ellipses. The arrow is to indicate the direction of rotation of the current vecto throughout the tidal cycle

[Carlos Adrián Vargas Aguilera]

Excellent code, but like Duane saids, you need to comment a little bit more about the inputs in the help and add a description. For example, inclination is the angle of the x-axis and the mayor semi-axis, that this is a way to plot a parametric ellipse. And that a ellipse can be made from the complex sum of two oposites rotating phasors which result from vectorial spectral analysis. And also can be made from the arrow of a vector whose components are 2 harmonics of the same frecuency, from which the sense of rotation is physicaly important, etc. etc.

For me, an Oceanographer, is not a problem the lack of information, but anyway, I'll send you some ideas to improve your help. Best regards, and keep the writting Martin.

[elegant charm]

 

[elegant charm]

great work...but very little explanation...kindly can u post a commented code...it would be a great help...

regards

[Anthony Delmas]

great thx

[piao lin]