MATLAB® 7.6

Product Description

• Introduction and Key Features
• Developing Algorithms and Applications
• Analyzing and Accessing Data
• Visualizing Data
• Performing Numeric Computation
• Publishing Results and Deploying Applications

Visualizing Data

All the graphics features that are required to visualize engineering and scientific data are available in MATLAB®. These include 2-D and 3-D plotting functions, 3-D volume visualization functions, tools for interactively creating plots, and the ability to export results to all popular graphics formats. You can customize plots by adding multiple axes; changing line colors and markers; adding annotation, LaTEX equations, and legends; and drawing shapes.

2-D Plotting

You can visualize vectors of data with 2-D plotting functions that create:

• Line, area, bar, and pie charts
• Direction and velocity plots
• Histograms
• Polygons and surfaces
• Scatter/bubble plots
• Animations

Line plots of multiple engine emission test results, with a curve fitted to the raw data. Click image to see enlarged view.

3-D Plotting and Volume Visualization

The MATLAB product provides functions for visualizing 2-D matrices, 3-D scalar, and 3-D vector data. You can use these functions to visualize and understand large, often complex, multidimensional data. You can specify plot characteristics, such as camera viewing angle, perspective, lighting effect, light source locations, and transparency. 3-D plotting functions include:

• Surface, contour, and mesh
• Image plots
• Cone, slice, stream, and isosurface

A 3-D isosurface plot revealing the geodesic dome structure of a carbon-60 fullerene molecule. Click image to see enlarged view.

Creating and Editing Plots Interactively

MATLAB provides interactive tools for designing and modifying graphics. From a MATLAB figure window, you can perform the following tasks:

• Drag and drop new data sets onto the figure
• Change the properties of any object on the figure
• Zoom, rotate, pan, and change camera angle and lighting
• Add annotations and data tips
• Draw shapes
• Generate an M-code function that can be reused with different data

A collection of graphs, constructed interactively by dragging data sets onto the plot window, creating new subplots, changing properties such as colors and fonts, and adding annotation. Click image to see enlarged view.

Importing and Exporting Graphic Files

MATLAB lets you read and write common graphical and data file formats, such as GIF, JPEG, BMP, EPS, TIFF, PNG, HDF, AVI, and PCX. As a result, you can export MATLAB plots to other applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint, or to desktop publishing software. Before exporting, you can create and apply style templates, covering characteristics such as layout, font, and line thickness, to meet publication specifications.