Creating a 3d Helix Spiral with Surf command

Hello Matlab family,

I am struck with this code in which I am unable to create a right 3d helical plot. Can you guys help me in identifying the problem

Answer 1

[DGM]

Hey, someone got results!

The remaining problems are few:

clc; clf
p=0.199;% Pitch distance
a=0.02999500;% Radius of the helis wire
b=0.191; %Radius of the helix
n = 5; %is the number of turns. 
del = atan(p/(2*pi*b));

u=linspace(0, 2*pi, 10); % correct range, practical number of points
v=linspace(0, 2*pi*n, 300); % practical number of points
[u,v]=meshgrid(u,v);

x1 = b + a*cos(u); % u, not delta
x2 = -a*sin(u)*sin(del);
x = (x1.*sin(v))+(x2.*cos(v)); % elementwise mult
y =(-x1.*cos(v))+(x2.*sin(v)); % elementwise mult
z = ((p*v)/(2*pi))+(a*sin(u)*cos(del));

h=surf(x, y, z);
title('3D Image of Helix')
zlabel('Height')
axis equal % otherwise it gets stretched out

% make it fancy
axis off
shading flat
lightangle(-90,30)
h.FaceLighting = 'gouraud';
h.SpecularStrength = 0.5;
h.AmbientStrength = 0.3;
h.DiffuseStrength = 0.9;

[ArMalik]

Hey thankyou so much for your reply. This helped me alot.

[Ar]

Cool!

How to make black background?

[DGM]

This is the code I used:

% set custom colormap
cset = ccmap('pastel',128);
colormap(cset)

bgc = 0; % background gray level
oc = get(gcf,'color'); % remember current background
set(gcf,'color',[1 1 1]*bgc) % set new background
% get screenshot and add padding
hires = addborder(export_fig('-a4','-m2'),[80 120],bgc*255);
set(gcf,'color',oc) % reset original figure background

Though note that this uses third party tools:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/53786-image-manipulation-toolbox

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23629-export_fig/

Also note that I did this in R2015b with an older version of export_fig(). You may find that it doesn't render exactly the same in different environments.