How to plot data with >2 dimensions?

I have a variable of size 3x5x10000 and I want to plot this. The idea is that there are 5 trees which grow over 10000 timesteps in 3 different scenarios.

How could I get this in a plot which shows the growth of 5 trees over 10000 timesteps in 1 plot, and have 3 plots in total for each different scenario? The plot function can seemingly only use data with 2 dimensions.

Answer 1

[Alan Stevens]

Look at documentation on plot3

Answer 2

[Rik]

Apart from plot3 (as Alan suggested), you may also consider using subplot to divide the different scenarios and using hold to plot the multiple trees in a single axes (or the reverse of course). The fact that your variable is 3D doesn't mean you need to actually plot your data in 3 dimensions.

[Steven Que]

When I use subplot and plot, I put:

time = 1:n; % Here n is the amount of timesteps, so 10000 in this case
subplot(1,3,1) % Use a 1x3 plot and define whats on #1 with plot
plot(time,dh(1,:),'b') % plot time vs the variable dh, 1st row and all columns

This gives me the error that the vectors are not the same length, time = 1:10000 and my dh looks like this:

val(:,:,1) =

    2.2321    2.6510    2.9316    3.1485    3.3277
    2.2321    2.6510    2.9316    3.1485    3.3277
    2.2321    2.6510    2.9316    3.1485    3.3277
    
    
val(:,:,2) =

    2.2322    2.6511    2.9317    3.1486    3.3278
    2.2322    2.6511    2.9317    3.1486    3.3278
    2.2322    2.6511    2.9317    3.1486    3.3278
    
% This small 3x5 repeats itself n times, so 10000 times.

How do I get row 1, column 1, for every of these 10000 in the plot?

When I try to use

    plot(1,1,:)

It says that the data cannot have more than 2 dimensions.

The end goal is to have the rows separated per subplot, and have every column as a different line per subplot.

[Rik]

Use dh(1,1,:) instead, that will select the first element from each 3x5 block. If plot still complains, use squeeze to reduce the dimensionality of your array.

dh=rand(3,5,10000);
time=1:size(dh,3);
n=0;
for scenario=1:size(dh,1)
    ax=subplot(1,3,scenario);
    cla(ax);%only for debugging: clear axes contents
    hold(ax,'on');
    for tree=1:size(dh,2)
        name=sprintf('tree %d',tree);
        plot(time,squeeze(dh(scenario,tree,:)),'DisplayName',name,'Parent',ax);
    end
    hold(ax,'off');
    title(sprintf('scenario %d',scenario))
    legend(ax)
end