How to create surface plot with coordinates of sphere?

I have text file with x y z coordinates for nodes of a sphere. How would I create a surface over these?
I am trying to analyse the change in shape of a sphere that has been deformed. I have the central coordinates. From this, would I be able to calculate the radius of the furthest node?

5 Comments

Is the order of the points known relative to each other? If not then the surface of the deformed sphere has to be reconstructed by looking to see which points are near each other, which could result in false connections getting formed as the object is distorted. Working with a point cloud is harder than working with a set of points whose connections are well defined.
The coordinates of the shell of the sphere has been extracted from a model created in Abaqus. I want to reproduce this shell using Matlab and create a smooth surface.
Here is an example of the data points. I have around 6500 number of points available for each sphere. It is included as a text file in attachment.
Number X Y Z
1) 8.13E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
2) 8.12E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
3) 8.12E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
4) 8.13E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
5) 8.12E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
6) 8.17E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
7) 8.17E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
8) 8.16E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
9) 8.16E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
10) 8.16E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
11) 8.15E-03 -2.43E-01 2.30E-01
The file did not get attached.
Usually the output of Abaqus is ordered somehow, but at the moment I do not know which order it uses.
That data only has 22 unique points (ignoring the ID), with the points arranged in pretty much a cuboid grid.

Sign in to comment.

Answers (0)

Asked:

on 21 Nov 2015

Commented:

on 22 Nov 2015

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!