Creating 3D Surface Plots with Matplotlib

Introduction

This lab demonstrates how to create a 3D surface plot using Matplotlib in Python. The surface is plotted using a solid color. The lab will guide you through each step of the process, including creating the data, plotting the surface, and setting the aspect ratio.

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Skills Graph

Importing Required Libraries

The first step is to import the required libraries. In this lab, we are using Matplotlib and NumPy libraries.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

Creating Data

The next step is to create the data for the 3D surface. We need to define u, v, x, y, and z. These variables will represent the angles and coordinates required to plot the surface. The linspace() function from NumPy is used to create the angles, and the outer() function is used to create the coordinates.

## Make data
u = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 100)
v = np.linspace(0, np.pi, 100)
x = 10 * np.outer(np.cos(u), np.sin(v))
y = 10 * np.outer(np.sin(u), np.sin(v))
z = 10 * np.outer(np.ones(np.size(u)), np.cos(v))

Creating the 3D Surface Plot

Now we can create the 3D surface plot. We start by creating a figure and adding a subplot with the projection='3d' argument. Then, we use the plot_surface() function to plot the surface using the data we created in the previous step.

## Plot the surface
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(projection='3d')
ax.plot_surface(x, y, z)

Setting the Aspect Ratio

To ensure that the plot has an equal aspect ratio, we can use the set_aspect() function. We pass in the string value 'equal' to set the aspect ratio to 1:1.

## Set an equal aspect ratio
ax.set_aspect('equal')

Summary

This lab demonstrated how to create a 3D surface plot using Matplotlib in Python. We created the data, plotted the surface, and set the aspect ratio. The resulting plot is a basic 3D surface plot with a solid color.