Plot a plane based on a normal vector and a point in Matlab or matplotlib

Solution 1:

For all the copy/pasters out there, here is similar code for Python using matplotlib:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D

point  = np.array([1, 2, 3])
normal = np.array([1, 1, 2])

# a plane is a*x+b*y+c*z+d=0
# [a,b,c] is the normal. Thus, we have to calculate
# d and we're set
d = -point.dot(normal)

# create x,y
xx, yy = np.meshgrid(range(10), range(10))

# calculate corresponding z
z = (-normal[0] * xx - normal[1] * yy - d) * 1. /normal[2]

# plot the surface
plt3d = plt.figure().gca(projection='3d')
plt3d.plot_surface(xx, yy, z)
plt.show()

Solution 2:

For Matlab:

point = [1,2,3];
normal = [1,1,2];

%# a plane is a*x+b*y+c*z+d=0
%# [a,b,c] is the normal. Thus, we have to calculate
%# d and we're set
d = -point*normal'; %'# dot product for less typing

%# create x,y
[xx,yy]=ndgrid(1:10,1:10);

%# calculate corresponding z
z = (-normal(1)*xx - normal(2)*yy - d)/normal(3);

%# plot the surface
figure
surf(xx,yy,z)

Note: this solution only works as long as normal(3) is not 0. If the plane is parallel to the z-axis, you can rotate the dimensions to keep the same approach:

z = (-normal(3)*xx - normal(1)*yy - d)/normal(2); %% assuming normal(3)==0 and normal(2)~=0

%% plot the surface
figure
surf(xx,yy,z)

%% label the axis to avoid confusion
xlabel('z')
ylabel('x')
zlabel('y')

Solution 3:

For copy-pasters wanting a gradient on the surface:

from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
from matplotlib import cm
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

point = np.array([1, 2, 3])
normal = np.array([1, 1, 2])

# a plane is a*x+b*y+c*z+d=0
# [a,b,c] is the normal. Thus, we have to calculate
# d and we're set
d = -point.dot(normal)

# create x,y
xx, yy = np.meshgrid(range(10), range(10))

# calculate corresponding z
z = (-normal[0] * xx - normal[1] * yy - d) * 1. / normal[2]

# plot the surface
plt3d = plt.figure().gca(projection='3d')

Gx, Gy = np.gradient(xx * yy)  # gradients with respect to x and y
G = (Gx ** 2 + Gy ** 2) ** .5  # gradient magnitude
N = G / G.max()  # normalize 0..1

plt3d.plot_surface(xx, yy, z, rstride=1, cstride=1,
                   facecolors=cm.jet(N),
                   linewidth=0, antialiased=False, shade=False
)
plt.show()