PLOTLAB - making beautiful trajectory (+other) plots on Julia using the MATLAB engine

Documentation (For full version, run make.jl in docs).

Note: to view full API information, build documentation by running julia docs/make.jl

PLOTLAB provides quick recipes for plotting trajectories using the MATLAB engine. PLOTLAB.jl is a Julia wrapper to these MATLAB routines for generating plots directly from Julia, based on MATLAB.jl.

MATLAB requirements

• MATLAB license
• MATLAB version: developed on 2020a
• Toolboxes: Mapping Toolbox (for plot_earth_geoid() function)

Usage via Julia

1. Make sure MATLAB.jl works on local Julia environment (install MATLAB, install csh)
2. git clone this repository & cd into PLOTLAB, then on Julia REPL ]dev .
3. using PLOTLAB or import PLOTLAB

Julia Depenencies

• MATLAB.jl, DocStringExtensions

Features (for plotting from Julia)

• 3D line plot: plot3
• 3D quiver plot: quiver3
• Color syntax (MATLAB/Julia syntax)
• 3D Plot geoid (need Mapping Toolbox)
• 3D Plot Moon
• 3D scatter plot: scatter3

Creating a figure

Creating a new MATLAB figure is as easy as

PLOTLAB.figure()

The PLOTLAB.figure() accepts optional parameters of the figure; here are some useful ones:

• view::Int: 2 for 2D, 3 for 3D view plot
• axis_equal::Bool: whether to set equal axes
• xlabel::String, ylabel::String, zlabel::String: names of axes
• xlim::Vector{Real}, ylim::Vector{Real}, zlim::Vector{Real}: limits on axes

Choosing colors

So many options for defining colors of your plots!

color_list = cgrad(:hawaii)   # define a color palette alla moda di julia's plots

PLOTLAB.plot3(traj1[1,:], traj1[2,:], traj1[3,:], lw=1.5, color="blue")           # MATLAB color names
PLOTLAB.plot3(traj2[1,:], traj2[2,:], traj2[3,:], lw=1.5, color=:gold)            # Julia color symbol
PLOTLAB.plot3(traj3[1,:], traj3[2,:], traj3[3,:], lw=1.5, color=[1.0, 0.0, 0.0])  # vector [r,g,b]
PLOTLAB.plot3(traj4[1,:], traj4[2,:], traj4[3,:], lw=1.5, color=color_list[1])    # color object

Examples

import PLOTLAB

PLOTLAB.close_all()     # close all figure
fig = PLOTLAB.figure(
	3,
	size=[200,200,500,500],
	box=true
)                       # create new figure

# plot Earth
ticks = [-1.5, -1.0, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5]
PLOTLAB.plot_earth_geoid(1.0, ticks)

# save
PLOTLAB.saveas(fig, "example_geoid.png")

• See ./examples for more

Usage via MATLAB

The MATLAB routines can of course be used directly by adding path.

1. git clone this repository
2. addpath to the src/matlab directory in MATLAB, i.e.

addpath('/path/to/PLOTLAB/src/matlab')

Gallery

• Geoid plot

• Moon plot

• 3D quiver

• Tweaking colors