Le 01/11/2014 19:21, Benjamin Root answers the query of Peter
Kerpedjiev, who wants to plot (with Matplotlib) the surface of an
implicit surface (at least it was his presented example).
Your comment "of course, plotting a sphere can be done in spherical
coordinates" is actually the right thought process. Spherical
coordinates is how you parametrize your spherical surface. Pick a
coordinate system that is relevant to your problem at hand and use it.
Sorry Ben, but this is not an answer. P.K. clearly states that his case
is more complicated, and no parametrization is likely. Anyway, the
spherical exercise as it is presented uses the 3D constraint, it is not
parametric.
The general solution is the *polygonization of the implicit surface*,
which is a well established technology (although non-trivial). For
example the /marching cubes / marching simplices/ algorithms and their
variants.
These are techniques for the polygonization of a mesh.
If P.K. has an analytic formula for his distributions, and is able to
compute gradients, etc., there are some more efficient techniques, but
in general it is the case for solving the equation F(x,y,z)=0 for
{x,y,z} ; here Matplotlib doesn't offer (yet) any tools if I am not
mistaken.
Jerzy Karczmarczuk
Caen, France.
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