Configure the transformations required for projecting a 3D surface on an existing 2D window. Those transformations (see the section called “Surface Plots”) are done to a rectangular cuboid enclosing the 3D surface which has its limits expressed in 3D world coordinates and also normalized 3D coordinates (used for interpreting the altitude and azimuth of the viewing angle). The transformations consist of the linear transform from 3D world coordinates to normalized 3D coordinates, and the 3D rotation of normalized coordinates required to align the pole of the new 3D coordinate system with the viewing direction specified by altitude and azimuth so that x and y of the surface elements in that transformed coordinate system are the projection of the 3D surface with given viewing direction on the 2D window.

The enclosing rectangular cuboid for the surface plot is defined by xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, zmin and zmax in 3D world coordinates. It is mapped into the same rectangular cuboid with normalized 3D coordinate sizes of basex by basey by height so that xmin maps to -basex/2, xmax maps to basex/2, ymin maps to -basey/2, ymax maps to basey/2, zmin maps to 0 and zmax maps to height. The resulting rectangular cuboid in normalized coordinates is then viewed by an observer at altitude alt and azimuth az. This routine must be called before plbox3 or any of the 3D surface plotting routines; plmesh, plmeshc, plot3d, plot3dc, plot3dcl, plsurf3d, plsurf3dl or plfill3.

Redacted form: plw3d(basex, basey, height, xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, zmin, zmax, alt, az)

This function is examples 8, 11, 18, and 21.