Mapping Toolbox 3.0

Analyze Digital Terrain and Elevation Models

Mapping Toolbox supports the visualization and analysis of 3D data, such as digital terrain, bathymetry, and other gridded-data products. It provides functions to visualize terrain data and add annotations such as contour lines. You can control lighting, shading, colormaps, and other aspects of the display. The MATLAB graphics environment enables you to reposition the figure camera interactively and programmatically to view your data from different perspectives.

The toolbox also provides functions to calculate gradient, slope, aspect, line-of-sight visibility, and viewshed. You can use these functions in applications such as the placement of communication towers, where you need to calculate the direct line-of-sight from many vantage points to determine the optimal location.

You can also use Mapping Toolbox with Simulink 3D Animation™ to create a virtual reality world from elevation data; you can then couple the terrain data with analysis provided by other products. For example, you can use Aerospace Blockset™ with your virtual world to perform tasks such as visualizing flight paths over geographic data sets.

Digital terrain visualization of the Grand Canyon image with contour data. DEM data courtesy of NASA-JPL/Caltech. Topographic data courtesy U.S. Geological Survey and retrieved via Microsoft TerraServer.