Frank Gekat wrote:
I would like to display an array of data with polar dependence in polar (r,phi) coordinates. The values of the data shall be color-coded. A single data point shall be represented by an area filled with the respective color. The center of the area is r_i, phi_1, the limits of the area is given by r_i +/-delta_r , phi_i +/- delta_phi. This data plot is typical for radars (PPI = plan position indicator). A example is enclosed. Any idea whether this is possible with Mathcad?
Can you provide some sample data? In which way is the color coded (0..255 ?). Is the data equally spaced with respect to r and phi (constant delta_r and delta_phi). Basically you demand that each data point should be represented by a circular ring sector, but I guess that a quadrilateral would do the job as well, right. The way you describe it delta_r and delta_phi are half of the step intervals.
I have played around with painting routines written in Mathcad 15 to create a bitmap but my implementations of Bresenham for circles and straight lines and my floodfill were prohibitive slow so I abandoned that work. So speed could be the limiting factor in Stuarts idea.
Another idea which comes to my mind is to create a 3D mesh using the corners of the circular ring sector plus the height depending on the color and creating a contourplot. The single horizontal meshes would be connected by vertical meshes to allow for the sudden change in height and I am not sure if this would work OK.
EDIT: I tried and it works pretty well. The number of data points could be the limit, though. But I think that at least up to one million datapoints should be manageable. That number of points would result in three 2000x2000 matrices which the contour plot should take without choking.
So for example PPI data with r=0..200 and phi=0..360° and delta_r=0.5, delta_phi=0.5° (--> approx. 3*10^5 data points) should still work.
