3D Plot not connecting on all axis, X,Y,Z

[zandrous]

Hi all,

I have been trying to make a 3D graph with X,Y,Z coordinates. The X,Y are in radians and are pre made and the Z would be measured to form a 360 RF polar plot. But for the purpose of the 3D plot I have just generated an array.

The problem is that I unable to make all the points connect, I have somehow got the generated sphere to connect either in the Z axis or Y/X axis, but I want a smoother plot. If you rotate some of the graphs you will notice at certain angles it becomes distorted and looks like a cacti and not a sphere.

In the file there is a really smooth sphere that someone else posted, however the result is what I would like to achieve but I am not sure how with just X,Y and Z arrays.

Any suggestions would be helpful

[wproud1]

Hi Zandrous,

I'm Will from National Instruments Applicaitons Engineering and hopefully we can fix the issue you've been having.

Can I confirm that the you are getting the same image as the one I have attached (minus the create 3D sphere VI).

Best,

Will  

[zandrous]

Hey will,

I can not see the image you have attached however I have attached images of what i am getting and the 3D sphere vi.

As you can see they are not connecting for some reason

Thanks for your help

z

[Ben]

Compare the data from the artificial sphere with the data from your files. The final 3D images rely heavily on the "shape" of the data and how it is formatted and organized.

Ben

[zandrous]

Is there anyway to connect the data so that the shape is better and more smooth?

[Ben]

Probably.

Did you compare the arrays as I suggesed?

The screenshot give me the impresion there are some zeros that are bringing the surface back the Z-Axis.

Ben

[zandrous]

I have compared the data and I was just confused by it. The 3D sphere uses Cartesian coordinates and not spherical plot like mine.

Also it uses a 128x128 array which values vary between -1 and 1 but that shouldn’t matter due to scaling.

I have generated another plot with more accurate Z data and it connects better but still isnt great.

[Ben]

I think the best advise I can offer is to scale down your experiments with the 3D graph until you can get a good idea of how to present the data to the graph.

Try to compose some simple surfaces using arrays you assemble by hand. That will let you fiddle with one value at a time to see what effect it has on the rendered 3d graph.

In this thread I put together a coolction of links to 3d related threads. While most of those still used the old CW 3D graph the ideas should still be similar. The car shown in that thread is a hand generated graph intended to serve as a way to figure out how to format 3d data.

The radar plot (?)

maybe close to what you want to achieve in the end.

Ben