If you want to plot a surface, you need to use matrix arguments.
Try this:
x = linspace(-3, 3);
y = x;
[X,Y] = ndgrid(x,y);
R = {3, 2, 1};
for i=1:length(R)
f = exp(-((X/R{i}).^2 + (Y/R{i}).^2));
hold on;
grid on;
mesh(X, Y, f);
end
view(-30,30)
If you first define your function in polar coordinates, you can then use the pol2cart function to convert them to Cartesian coordinates. The plot should have a circular shape.
EDIT —
For example:
r = linspace(-3, 3);
th = linspace(0, 2*pi, 90);
[R,T] = ndgrid(r,th);
Z = exp(-R.^2);
[X,Y,Z] = pol2cart(T, R, Z);
figure
surf(X, Y, Z)
shading('interp')
grid on
produces:
Note that I defined the original matrices as ‘r’ (radius) and ‘th’ (angle), then converted them to Cartesian and plotted them. This loses the angle information in the plot, so you need to create them yourself:
r = linspace(-3, 3);
th = linspace(0, 2*pi, 90);
[R,T] = ndgrid(r,th);
Z = exp(-R.^2);
[X,Y,Z] = pol2cart(T, R, Z);
thg = linspace(0, 2*pi, 12);
polgrid = [5*cos(thg); 5*sin(thg)];
figure
surf(X, Y, Z)
hold on
plot3([zeros(size(thg)); polgrid(1,:)], [zeros(size(thg)); polgrid(2,:)], zeros(2, size(thg,2))-0.1, '-k')
hold off
shading('interp')
Ax = gca;
Ax.XAxis.Color = 'none';
Ax.YAxis.Color = 'none';
Ax.XGrid = 'off';
Ax.YGrid = 'off';
grid on
