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dnorman1-Visitor
1-Visitor
March 8, 2016
Question

help!.. how can i plot a 3d surface graph from 3 columns of data i've got in excel?

  • March 8, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 5316 views

hi, this can't be hard can it?.. am new to mathcad and am trying to import 3 columns x12 rows of excel data by copy/paste into a table and/or a matrix etc with the intention of plotting on a 3d surface graph

...I can paste the values into the mathcad matrix ok but can't seem to assign a variable name to the matrix... so graph can't load it (nor can anything else refer to it I suppose)

...the table rows/columns aren't read in from the excel data - they are presumed 0, 1, 2 etc - so axes are preset to 0, 1, 2... rather than 1st 2 columns of data in excel file - graph just plots 3 columns of data imported as if they were functions f({0, 1, 2}, {0, 1, 2})... which seems a bit dim ...(my 3 columns in excel are the x, y, z) function should be {excel col3} = f({excel col1}, {excel col2})

I must be missing something obvious - can anyone help?

lots of thanks

2 replies

F
Fred_Kohlhepp23-Emerald I
23-Emerald I
March 8, 2016

In version 15, it's not hard:

  1. select the data in EXCEL and copy
  2. In version 15, type your matrix name and :=, then paste.  And you have your matrix.

In Prime, I believe it's a bit more complicated.  Insert an EXCEL component, paste the data into the component, and define your matrix from the component.

S
StuartBruff23-Emerald V
23-Emerald V
March 9, 2016

dave norman wrote:

hi, this can't be hard can it?.. am new to mathcad and am trying to import 3 columns x12 rows of excel data by copy/paste into a table and/or a matrix etc with the intention of plotting on a 3d surface graph

...I can paste the values into the mathcad matrix ok but can't seem to assign a variable name to the matrix... so graph can't load it (nor can anything else refer to it I suppose)

...the table rows/columns aren't read in from the excel data - they are presumed 0, 1, 2 etc - so axes are preset to 0, 1, 2... rather than 1st 2 columns of data in excel file - graph just plots 3 columns of data imported as if they were functions f({0, 1, 2}, {0, 1, 2})... which seems a bit dim ...(my 3 columns in excel are the x, y, z) function should be {excel col3} = f({excel col1}, {excel col2})

I must be missing something obvious - can anyone help?

lots of thanks

    D
    dnorman1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    March 9, 2016

    thanks for this - it's a brilliant reply!..

    it's almost exactly what I wanted to do... but just one last thing... the x, y axes are labelled according to the row/column number of the data - can the x/y axes range be labelled from the min/max x, y values in the matrix array instead? (i.e. if the x value was say temperature, it would make sense to have the x-axis showing the temperature range, not just which row/column the data came from...)

    ok.. hope clear to understand

    D
    dnorman1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    March 10, 2016

    ughhh... how do I separate each column with a column and wrap parentheses around them?.. (btw here is my x,y,z dataset)

    I don't know what key strokes needed to do this... sorry

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