plot3 for 3D lines in MATLAB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Plotting 3D Lines Using plot3 in MATLAB

📖 Scenario: You are working on a simple 3D visualization for a small engineering project. You want to draw a line in 3D space to represent a wire connecting two points.

🎯 Goal: Build a MATLAB script that uses plot3 to draw a 3D line between two points with given coordinates.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create vectors for the x, y, and z coordinates of the two points

Create a variable for line color

Use plot3 to draw the 3D line connecting the points

Display the plot with axis labels

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

3D line plots are useful in engineering and science to visualize paths, trajectories, or connections in space.

💼 Career

Knowing how to plot 3D data helps in fields like mechanical engineering, robotics, and data visualization.

1

DATA SETUP: Define the coordinates of two points

Create three vectors called x, y, and z each containing exactly two values: x = [1 4], y = [2 5], and z = [3 6].

MATLAB

% Create vectors x, y, and z with the given values
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to create vectors in MATLAB, for example: x = [1 4];

2

CONFIGURATION: Define the line color

Create a variable called lineColor and set it to the string 'r' to represent a red line.

MATLAB

x = [1 4];
y = [2 5];
z = [3 6];
% Define the line color as red
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use single quotes to define a character vector for color in MATLAB, like 'r' for red.

3

CORE LOGIC: Plot the 3D line using plot3

Use plot3 with the vectors x, y, and z and the color variable lineColor to draw the 3D line.

MATLAB

x = [1 4];
y = [2 5];
z = [3 6];
lineColor = 'r';
% Plot the 3D line
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use plot3(x, y, z, lineColor) to plot a 3D line with the specified color.

4

OUTPUT: Add axis labels and display the plot

Add labels to the x, y, and z axes using xlabel, ylabel, and zlabel with the texts 'X-axis', 'Y-axis', and 'Z-axis' respectively. Then run the script to display the plot.

MATLAB

x = [1 4];
y = [2 5];
z = [3 6];
lineColor = 'r';
plot3(x, y, z, lineColor);
% Add axis labels below
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use xlabel('X-axis'), ylabel('Y-axis'), and zlabel('Z-axis') to label the axes.