Create a 3D plot with shadow length, altitude, and time.

Dear experts;

I would like to create a nice 3D plot with variables shadow length, altitude, and Time. I attached my code and the data here along with a sample plot that I would like to have.

Your help will be greatly appriciated

[Voss]

I don't see the sample plot. Can you attach it?

[Sanley Guerrier]

Hi Voss,

I attached the sample plot here. Thank you!

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Filling the inside of the 3D curve is straightforrward —

run('shadecode.mlx')

T1 = readtable('Shadedata.xlsx')

T1 = 40×4 table
     Time      Altitude    ShadowLength    ShadowLength_m
    _______    ________    ____________    ______________

    0.32292      1.34         616.16           2135.8    
    0.33333      2.34         238.74           808.83    
    0.34375      3.34         147.03           495.25    
    0.35417      4.34         106.39           357.42    
    0.36458      5.34           83.6           280.44    
      0.375      6.34          69.07            231.5    
    0.38542      7.34          59.05           197.77    
    0.39583      8.34          51.74           173.22    
    0.40625     17.92          46.21           154.65    
    0.41667     19.63           41.9           140.22    
    0.42708     21.22          38.49           128.79    
     0.4375     22.68          35.76           119.62    
    0.44792     24.02          33.55           112.22    
    0.45833      25.2          31.76           106.24    
    0.46875     26.24          30.33           101.45    
    0.47917     27.11          29.21            97.68    

t = T1.Time;
Alt = T1.Altitude;
SL = T1.ShadowLength;
SLm = T1.ShadowLength_m;

figure
plot3(Alt, SL, t)
hold on
patch([Alt flip(Alt)], [SL flip(SL)], [t flip(t)], [0 0 0]+0.5, 'FaceAlpha',0.5)
hold off
grid on
xlabel('Altitude')
ylabel('Shadow Length')
zlabel('Time')

Filling the outside is not.

.

[Sanley Guerrier]

Thank you, Star Strider;

My bad I thought I attached the sample plot I would like to have. I attached it here, can you take a look at it?

[Star Strider]

I’m lost.

figure
imshow(imread('3D.JPG'))

It is not obvious to me how to calculate ‘Aspect’ and ‘Slope’ from the available data. The ‘Slope’ could be inferred from ‘shadow length’ (if the tree height was available, since it’s likely the arctangent of the tree height divided by the shadow length), however ‘Aspect’ is undefined. How does ‘Time’ relate to all of it?

It seems to me that you would have to have several of these files to create a surface plot, concatenating the ‘shadow length’ vectors into a matrix (assuming thy all had the same lengths and were recorded at the same times, or could be interpolated to the same times).

.

[Sanley Guerrier]

You are right, I thought I could have my plot shape like that.

Could you fix the hourly values in the axis "Time" to make it look the same as the one in 2D plot I created.

Thanks,

[Star Strider]

Try this —

% run('shadecode.mlx')

T1 = readtable('Shadedata.xlsx')

T1 = 40×4 table
     Time      Altitude    ShadowLength    ShadowLength_m
    _______    ________    ____________    ______________

    0.32292      1.34         616.16           2135.8    
    0.33333      2.34         238.74           808.83    
    0.34375      3.34         147.03           495.25    
    0.35417      4.34         106.39           357.42    
    0.36458      5.34           83.6           280.44    
      0.375      6.34          69.07            231.5    
    0.38542      7.34          59.05           197.77    
    0.39583      8.34          51.74           173.22    
    0.40625     17.92          46.21           154.65    
    0.41667     19.63           41.9           140.22    
    0.42708     21.22          38.49           128.79    
     0.4375     22.68          35.76           119.62    
    0.44792     24.02          33.55           112.22    
    0.45833      25.2          31.76           106.24    
    0.46875     26.24          30.33           101.45    
    0.47917     27.11          29.21            97.68    

t = T1.Time;
th = hours(t*24);
th.Format = 'hh:mm';
Alt = T1.Altitude;
SL = T1.ShadowLength;
SLm = T1.ShadowLength_m;

figure
plot3(Alt, SL, th)
hold on
patch([Alt flip(Alt)], [SL flip(SL)], [t flip(t)], [0 0 0]+0.5, 'FaceAlpha',0.5)
hold off
grid on
xlabel('Altitude')
ylabel('Shadow Length')
zlabel('Time')
zt = zticks;
zticks(hours(8 : 2 :16))

.

[Sanley Guerrier]

Thank you!

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure!