How can I plot circles, same radius and different centers, all in one graph. I used the following command to draw +,o,diamond: plot (x,y,'ro',u,v,'gd',A,B,'b+'); where x,y,u,v,A,B are all row vectors. And I want to add circles to that plot where the o will be the center.

1 Comment

function draw_circle1(x,y,R,c)
t =0:0.05:6.28;
x1 = (x +R*cos(t))';
y1= (x +R*sin(t))';

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 Accepted Answer

Paulo Silva
Paulo Silva on 12 Mar 2011
Here's a function to draw circles:
function circle(x,y,r)
%x and y are the coordinates of the center of the circle
%r is the radius of the circle
%0.01 is the angle step, bigger values will draw the circle faster but
%you might notice imperfections (not very smooth)
ang=0:0.01:2*pi;
xp=r*cos(ang);
yp=r*sin(ang);
plot(x+xp,y+yp);
end
If you want to add circles you must insert the command
hold on
before the circles being added.

8 Comments

Firas
Firas on 29 Dec 2014
That's awesome
Eddie
Eddie on 15 Mar 2017
Thanks a lot, this is great. If I had some time, I would probably tweak your code and try to plot open intervals on the real line, that's what I really need, but circles are fine too.
Bud Kelly
Bud Kelly on 2 Apr 2018
There are coding solutions and there are coding solutions. The ones that accomplish the task as this one does are...elegant... beautiful... art. Thank you, you may consider it stolen! ;-)
passioncoding
passioncoding on 20 Aug 2018
I have been trying to create function for circle with function that mentioned above ,but I am getting this "Not enough input arguments" for "xp=r*cos(ang)". kindly help me in this regard
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 20 Aug 2018
Edited: Image Analyst on 20 Aug 2018
What is ang for you? Did you comment out or delete the line
ang=0:0.01:2*pi;
??? You did one or the other because if you didn't, ang would exist and you would not get that error.
Do you know how to debug by setting a breakpoint on that line and looking at its value? If not, see this link
what does 0.01 in ang mean? i dont understand this part
It's the step size. You can use the colon in two ways when you create an array:
start:stop
start:step:stop
Thank you very much!

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More Answers (3)

Michelle Hirsch
Michelle Hirsch on 29 Jan 2016
It's counter-intuitive, but this is actually really easy with the rectangle function. From the rectangle documentation :
pos = [2 4 2 2];
rectangle('Position',pos,'Curvature',[1 1])
axis equal

5 Comments

And with R2012a and later you can use viscircles
numCircles = 15;
x = 5 + randi(95, numCircles, 1);
y = 5 + randi(95, numCircles, 1);
radius = 2 * ones(numCircles, 1);
viscircles([x, y], radius);
grid on;
axis equal
Ronald Mintz
Ronald Mintz on 14 Apr 2016
Thanks very much Michelle. Your idea made beautiful concentric circles. viscircles didn't work on my computer because I have version R2011a.
rectangle() is one of several methods listed in the FAQ: http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_do_I_create_a_circle.3F> You'll have lots of other nice improvements that they've made over the last 5 years if you upgrade.
numCircles = 15;
x = 5 + randi(95, numCircles, 1);
y = 5 + randi(95, numCircles, 1);
radius = 2 * ones(numCircles, 1);
viscircles([x, y], radius);
grid on;
axis equal
Royi Avital
Royi Avital on 10 Dec 2023
@Michelle Hirsch, It would be great if it had the DisplayName property like most other objects.
It makes easier when adding it to the legend.
@Royi Avital I think it's more than just adding DisplayName - annotations like rectangle (intentionally) don't show up in legend since they are meant to be annotations, not data. Are you interested in being able to include annotations in legend? If so, please share more about your use case so I make sure we understand what you are thinking.

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Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 20 Jan 2016
Edited: Image Analyst on 15 Apr 2022
numCircles = 15;
x = 5 + randi(95, numCircles, 1);
y = 5 + randi(95, numCircles, 1);
radius = 2 * ones(numCircles, 1);
viscircles([x, y], radius);
grid on;
axis equal

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