Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Mathcad 11 3D Graphics - Ball & Stick Models


  One do surface plots of more complicated surfaces such as ball and stick models with Mathcad 11. I started with a simple dumbbell shape consisting of two spheres and a connecting rod. One can plot both spheres at the same time by stacking the two matrices containing a grid of points on their surfaces. The rod is a simple cylinder shape and is done separately. Each group of objects can be assigned separate surface properties.


The technique can be used to draw more complicated ball and stick figures such as a simple tetrahedral model.


One can change the point of view for the 3D surface plot by clicking and holding a point in the plot then dragging it to a new position. This makes it easier to visualize more complicated objects.

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