Easy way to set camera viewing axis normal to a plane

Is there an easy way to set the camera viewing axis normal to one of the planes in a 3D plot. That is set the camera to only look at the xy plane or xz plane, etc. Trying to position the camera manually does not work well and is very frustrating.

I created a bunch of .fig files of some data points in 3D space and now I am trying to visualize them from different angles, namely looking down(xy plane) and across(xz-yz planes).

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

[Matt Fig]

Run this to see. Look at the view of the plot that pops up, then press return to see the next view. Do this twice.

plot3(0,0,0)
axis([-1 1 -1 1 -1 1])
xlabel('X')
ylabel('Y')
zlabel('Z')
view(0,90)  % XY
pause
view(0,0)   % XZ
pause
view(90,0)  % YZ

[Jason]

Thanks for the quick response and help.

[Timothy Russell]

how do you rotate the YZ view 90 degrees?

Answer 2

[Paulo Silva]

doc view

Answer 3

[Massimo Ciacci]

I guess the following function should do, it is based on the fact that the conversion [x,y,z] to [az,el] to [x,y,z] is

    x=sin(az)*cos(el)
    y=cos(az)*cos(el)
    z=sin(el)

and therefore

    az = 180/pi*asin(x/sqrt(x^2+y^2));
    el = 180/pi*asin(z);

---------------

    function [az,el]=normalToAzimuthElevationDEG(x,y,z, applyView)

    if nargin < 3
        applyView = 0;
    end

    if length(x)>1
        v         = x;
        if nargin > 1
            applyView = y;
        end
        x=v(1);
        y=v(2);
        z=v(3);
    end

    if x==0 && y==0
        x =eps;
    end

    vNorm = sqrt(x^2+y^2+z^2);
    x=x/vNorm;
    y=y/vNorm;
    z=z/vNorm;

    az = 180/pi*asin(x/sqrt(x^2+y^2));
    el = 180/pi*asin(z);

    if applyView
        thereIsAnOpenFig = ~isempty(findall(0,'Type','Figure'));
        if thereIsAnOpenFig
            axis equal
            view([az,el]);
            %the normal to the plane should now appear as a point
            plot3([0,x],[0,y],[0,z],'linewidth',3)
        end
    end

[Josh Philipson]

Massimo, Thanks!!