MATLAB 4D color plot

I am an amateur user of MATLAB and I would like to have a 4D color plot which the color represent the forth dimension. I try to use scatter3 as follow:

fid = fopen('abc.dat','r');
datacell = textscan(fid, '%f%f%f%f'); 
fclose(fid);

all_data = cell2mat(datacell); %converted into a matrix 

boxx = all_data(:,1);
boxy = all_data(:,2);
boxz = all_data(:,3);
disden = all_data(:,4); %color depends on the value of disden

scatter3(boxx,boxy,boxz,400,disden,'filled') 

xlabel('Box x')
ylabel('Box y')
zlabel('Box z')
cb = colorbar;      % create  the colorbar
set(get(cb,'title'),'string','Dislocation Density(m^{-2})'); % label colobar

Although it works but I want the whole space to be filled up by cubes instead of spots in the above case. In the above case only spots are used so even their size can be set they still cannot fill up the space. All my x,y,z values are integers, can I use cube with size 1x1x1 with colors defined by the forth dimension so that the whole space can be filled up?

Another problem is the label of the color bar is too close with the numbers shown in colorbar and they overlap. Can I set the position of the bar label so that it is a little bit further away?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

scatter3() cannot create cubes. You can create cubes using patch().

Caution: when you fill up the space with cubes, you will not be able to see "into" the space, except to the extent that you use AlphaData to make surfaces more or less transparent.

When you have solid 3D (plus value) data then you should consider a voxel viewer, or slice() or isosurface()

[Kelvin]

I tried to use patch to substitute scatter3 in my program but some error occurs:

Error using patch
Too many input arguments.
Error in Practice_3Dplot (line 19)
patch(boxx,boxy,boxz,400,disden,'filled') %400   % draw the scatter plot

Can patch (or may be some other functions) be used in my case?

Thank you.

[Walter Roberson]

patch() has a calling sequence which is not the same as scatter3(). See http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/patch.html

In particular in order to create the cubes like you want, you will want to use the Faces and Vertices form, along with passing some of the other properties which you can find described at http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/patch-properties.html

You will need to decide whether you want to build interior cubes or if you just want to define a bunch of rectangular faces. Either way watch out for defining the vertices in a consistent order so that lighting can be done correctly.