planePlotter

Draws a plane defined by a point and normal vector

PLANE PLOTTER - draws a plane defined by a point and normal vector

the plane will be drawn as a square of specified range centred around 'point'

!!!! Acknowledgement: !!!!!!!!!!!!

this is an implementation of a method described by Roger Stafford on the MATLAB answers forum.

(https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/291485-how-can-i-plot-a-3d-plane-knowing-its-center-point-coordinates-and-its-normal#answer_226405)

The actual method is taken straight from the forum, I simply added some input features etc. to make it universal and more convenient to use by organizing the input structure

Syntax: p=planePlotter(point, normal)

p=planePlotter(point, normal, ...)

planePlotter(point, normal)

planePlotter(point, normal, ...)

INPUTS:

point - xyz coordinates (1x3 or 3x1) of a point in the plane

normal - normal vector to the plane (1x3 or 3x1)

OPTIONAL INPUTS:

optional inputs can be specified as Name-Value pairs to give additional

graphics choices

'range': scalar; defines the range of the plane that will be graphed

(size of the square); default=1 resulting in a 2x2 square

'gridlines': scalar, defines how many grid-lines will be drawn on the plane;

default=1 -> no lines; 2 -> edges drawn; 3 -> edges plus 4 squares; etc

'FaceColor': string, RGB triplet or hexidecimal string; default='green'

'FaceAlpha': scalar; default=0.3

'EdgeColor': string, RGB triplet or hexidecimal string; default='black'

OUTPUT:

for simple drawing, the output does not have to be defined

defining the output p saves the graphics element to allow later editing

Example 1:

% plane at 45º angle through origin

% specifying only point and normal vector leaves optional inputs as

% default resulting in a green plane with no lines:

point=[0 0 0];

vector=[1 1 1];

planePlotter(point, vector);

axis equal

% we can add the point and vector to this as illustrations:

hold on

scatter3(point(1), point(2), point(3), 500, '+', 'LineWidth', 2);

quiver3(point(1), point(2), point(3), vector(1), vector(2), vector(3), 'Color', 'r', 'MaxHeadSize', 1, 'LineWidth', 2);

view(2);

Example 2:

% drawing the same plane with a range of 5 (resulting in a 10x10 square)

% with gridlines drawing 1x1 grid squares (11 gridlines including 0 and 10)

% with teal faces and magenta edges

p=planePlotter([0 0 0], [1 1 1], 'range', 5, 'gridlines', 11, 'FaceColor', [0, 1, 1], 'EdgeColor', '#FF00FF');

axis equal

% specifying the graphics output (p) allows us to change individual graphics settings afterwards

p.FaceAlpha=0.8;

p.FaceColor='blue';

p.EdgeColor='r';

p.LineWidth=3;

p.LineStyle=':';