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Meshgrid for logarithmic scales

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I would like to make 3-D plot using mesh in which one axis should be on a logarithmic scale. Is there a way to use meshgrid and mesh to do this?
Thanks.

Accepted Answer

Sean de Wolski
Sean de Wolski on 21 Dec 2011
Set the corresponding scale to 'log'
h = figure;
A = axes;
surf(magic(10));
set(A,'XScale','log')
The explanation is in:
docsearch axes properties
under xscale/yscale/zscale

More Answers (2)

Rishabh Gupta
Rishabh Gupta on 15 Oct 2017
If you are using mesh command, just use the following:
Set(gca,'XScale','log');

Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 21 Dec 2011
It is not supported to set the [XYZ]Scale to 'log' if you are using transparency. I do not recall at the moment which of the settings takes priority.
If any of your coordinates on the log scale are 0 or less, then those points will be ignored with [XYZ]Scale is 'log', and nothing will be drawn to those points (in particular, no interpolation of the adjacent points towards the axis limit will be done.)
As far as I recall at the moment, it is allowed to use mesh with an axis set to log scale.
Are you perhaps attempting to use meshgrid to create points that will show up as-if linearly spaced when the axis is set to log scale? If so, then yes, just use exp(ThePoints) or 10.^(ThePoints) as the corresponding meshgrid argument.
Are you perhaps attempting to use meshgrid to create points that will show up as-if spaced logarithmically when the axis is set to linear -- faking a log scale? If so, then yes, just use ln(ThePoints) or log10(ThePoints) as the corresponding meshgrid argument (and watch out for original points <= 0)
  1 Comment
David Koenig
David Koenig on 21 Dec 2011
Thank you, Walter. I think I see what you are getting at but I am still having trouble.
I have a surface Z(x,y) where I want to plot the x-axis on a logarithmic scale, analogous to the case where I have a line z(x) and I want to use
semilogx(x,z)
So, back to the case of Z(x,y). If I use
[X.Y]=meshgrid(log10(x),y)
mesh(X,Y,Z)
I get a nice plot but...
I get numbers on the x-axis that are the logs of x. I want the x-axis to have numbers of x.
If I use
[X.Y]=meshgrid(10.^x,y)
mesh(X,Y,Z)
I get overflow because 10.^x goes to inf.
Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks.

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