Need help graphing a surface!

[valeous]

Hi,

I am graphing x, y, z equations into surfaces. I am currently doing this in Excel. However, in Excel, I have to use 'matrices' with defined values. How can I graph an equation like this...

x = y + z

...without needing to have defined values/matrices.

How can I do this? Should I stick to Excel? move to MatLab? or is there a better application out there to do this?

Thanks

[MrShorty]

Excel does not have build in support for 3D scatter plots, nor does it have built in support for graphing directly from symbolic equations. So, in response to "stick to Excel" or "move to Matlab or other application", my vote would be to use a different application like Matlab or other specialty graphing software. I create almost exclusively 2D scatter plots, so I have next to 0 experience with graphing applications outside of Excel, so I cannot make a specific recommendation.

If you decide that you really want to do this in Excel, come back and let us know. This kind of thing can be mocked up in Excel if desired.

[Kaper]

MathLab will give much more control over graphs tha Excel does.
If You do not have (or have limitted access as myself) to this (quite expensive for private non-student) soft
- you could try freeware: gnuplot It is really powerfull but needs some time to learn "how-to"

As for excel - you could try to make a kind of 2d view of 3d space and plot it with standard scatterplot, but it is time consuming, and slow to calculate (a lot of trigonometric functions). So My personal favourites are here MatLab and gnuplot.