plotting scatter3 and surf plots from loop in matlab - matlab

Question

I want to plot scatter3 and surf plots from a loop. Below is my code but it isn't working...not sure where I'm going wrong but clearly something is wrong with the z matrix?
for e = 1:10;
x = rand(1,3);
y = rand(1,3);
A = x+y;
subplot(2,2,1)
p = find(A(:,1) > 1.1 & A(:,1) < 1.6);
Result = A(p,:);
scatter3(Result(:,1), Result(:,2), Result(:,3))
hold on
z(e,:) = [Result(1) Result(2) Result(3)];
end
subplot(2,2,2)
surf(z)

Answer 1

I will reiterate what I said in my comment to you. I got this error message when trying to run your code: Attempted to access Result(1); index out of bounds because numel(Result)=0. This is because your p condition isn't satisfied - MATLAB could not find any elements in the first column that are between 1.1 and 1.6.
As such, what I would suggest you do is check to see if Result is empty before trying to access the value itself. However, I would suggest you don't write a loop and generate all of the random values at once, then do the filtering with the Boolean conditions. Therefore, the equivalent code without using a loop would be this:
x = rand(10,3);
y = rand(10,3);
A = x+y;
p = A(:,1) > 1.1 & A(:,1) < 1.6;
z = A(p,:);
figure;
subplot(2,1,1);
scatter3(z(:,1), z(:,2), z(:,3));
subplot(2,1,2);
surf(z);
We generate 10 3D points for x and y at the beginning, then add these and store this into A. Next, we find the rows in A that are between 1.1 and 1.6 in the first column and store this as a logical array. We then use this array to index into A and store the results into z. This is the recommended approach if you want to extract certain elements into an array rather than using find.
Once we obtain z, we plot these points with scatter, then also find a surface plot with surf for the same matrix. BTW, I've fixed your subplot as you are only creating two plots, yet you are allocating space for 4 plots.
If you're absolutely bent on using your code, you would simply do this:
z = []; %// Change
for e = 1:10
x = rand(1,3);
y = rand(1,3);
A = x+y;
subplot(2,1,1)
p = find(A(:,1) > 1.1 & A(:,1) < 1.6);
Result = A(p,:);
scatter3(Result(:,1), Result(:,2), Result(:,3))
hold on
if ~isempty(Result) %// Change here
z = [z; Result(1) Result(2) Result(3)]; %// Change
end
end
subplot(2,1,2)
surf(z)
What's important is the initialization of z. I made this empty, and we only add to z if Result is not empty - this will happen if you generate a number that is not between 1.1 and 1.6.