Chapter 7 Rotation Matrice Example

7.1 Getting Started

Lets start by creating an empty script Start with the basic cleaning commands

clear; 

clear deletes all of the variables in your workspace - this makes sure that every time we run our code, we’re always using the data from this run of the script, and not a previous run.`

clc; 

clc deletes all of the old messages in the console or command window. This makes sure that the only messages we see on our command window come from this run of the script, and not from a previous run.

close all; 

close all closes all of the previous plots and graph windows. This way you know that the plots you see generated are new, and not old data.

Let’s load up our aircraft into Matlab

load Lab_Airplane.mat

Take a look at the new variables in your workspace

who -file Lab_Airplane.mat

The who command prints a list of variables - in this case, we’ve asked it about the airplane_model file

Your variables are: 

airplane f

7.2 Making an Airplane

Lets take a closer look at the airplane variable

size(airplane)

ans = 1x2
    36    3
    

Airplane is a 36 row by 3 column matrix. This variable represents the x, y, and z coordinates of every corner in our airplane model. There are 36 points within our airplane model.

airplane(1,:)

ans = 1x3

    - 6.8000    0.5000    0.8000
    

The first point in our model occurs at the 3D point: -6.8 on the x-axis, 0.5 on the y-axis and 0.8 on the z-axis.

Let’s plot this