With what command i can change the width of contours created with SURFC from the beginning?

Hi friends

I created a 3D figure using SURFC. Now I want to increase the width of contours appeared in figure to 2, but I can not select contours to change their width. How can I plot the figure with wider contours from the beginning (what property or command)?

thank you

Answer 1

[Mike Garrity]

The property is LineWidth, but things are a little tricky with surfc. The surfc command turns around and calls surf and contour. It is going to pass all of the property/value pairs you give it to the surf command, not the contour command. That means that if we do this:

surfc(peaks,'LineWidth',4)

We'll get wide lines on our surface, rather than on our contour.

The easiest way to set properties on the contour object is to get the return value from surfc.

h = surfc(peaks)

This should say something like this:

h = 

2x1 graphics array:

Surface
Contour

That's saying that h is an array of two graphics objects. The first is the surface and the second is the contour. That means that we can do things like this:

h(2).LineWidth = 4

[Moein]

thanks Mike

but can you apply your method on following code?

T=linspace(-pi/8,pi/8,30);

R=linspace(0,1,30);

[t, r]=meshgrid(T, R);

z=(0.2079921258e1 .* (cos((4 .* t)) .^ 2 .* ((4 .* r .^ 3 - 2 .* r) .^ 2) ./ 0.144e3 + sin((4 .* t)) .^ 2 .* ((r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) .^ 2) ./ (r .^ 2) ./ 0.9e1) ./ (-0.1361305280e0 .* cos((4 .* t)) .* (r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) + 0.1e1) + 0.1e1) ./ (-0.1361305280e0 .* cos((4 .* t)) .* (r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) + 0.1e1);

[x,y,z]=pol2cart(t,r,z);

surfc(x,y,z,'FaceColor','interp','FaceLighting','phong');

[Mike Garrity]

Sure. In that last line, you're setting the values of the FaceColor and FaceLighting properties on the surf object. But you also want to set the LineWidth property on the contour object. To do that, you'll need to get the return value from surfc.

h = surfc(x,y,z,'FaceColor','interp','FaceLighting','phong');
h(2).LineWidth = 3;

[Moein]

i don't know how i can get the return value from surfc to contours. i raplaced the last line in my code with two lines that you wrote and then wrote the following code. but it errors: "??? Structure assignment to non-structure object." is it because of my matlab's version? i'm using R2010b.

the code:

   T=linspace(-pi/8,pi/8,30);
   R=linspace(0,1,30);
   [t, r]=meshgrid(T, R);
   z=(0.2079921258e1 .* (cos((4 .* t)) .^ 2 .* ((4 .* r .^ 3 - 2 .* r) .^ 2) ./ 0.144e3 + sin((4 .* t)) .^ 2 .* ((r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) .^ 2) ./ (r .^ 2) ./ 0.9e1) ./ (-0.1361305280e0 .* cos((4 .* t)) .* (r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) + 0.1e1) + 0.1e1) ./ (-0.1361305280e0 .* cos((4 .* t)) .* (r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) + 0.1e1);
   [x,y,z]=pol2cart(t,r,z);
   h = surfc(x,y,z,'FaceColor','interp','FaceLighting','phong');
   h(2).LineWidth = 3;

[Mike Garrity]

Sorry, the 'dot notation' was introduced in R2014b. In R2010b, you'll need to use the set command.

set(h(2),'LineWidth',3)

[Moein]

so funny! new problem!

just one contour (the smallest one) shaped with wider curve.

other ones shaped as before. look at the attached photo.

[Moein]

at last i found the answer.following code:

T=linspace(-pi/8,pi/8,30);
R=linspace(0,1,30);
[t, r]=meshgrid(T, R);
z=(0.2079921258e1 .* (cos((4 .* t)) .^ 2 .* ((4 .* r .^ 3 - 2 .* r) .^ 2) ./ 0.144e3 + sin((4 .* t)) .^ 2 .* ((r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) .^ 2) ./ (r .^ 2) ./ 0.9e1) ./ (-0.1361305280e0 .* cos((4 .* t)) .* (r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) + 0.1e1) + 0.1e1) ./ (-0.1361305280e0 .* cos((4 .* t)) .* (r .^ 4 - r .^ 2) + 0.1e1);
[x,y,z]=pol2cart(t,r,z);
h=surfc(x,y,z,'FaceColor','interp','FaceLighting','phong');
for i=2:16
set(h(i),'LineWidth',2)
end

thank you very much Mike for your help.