LaTeX 3D Plot from csv

Question

I have a lot of csv-files with this format:

-,x0,x1,x2,x3,x4
y0,z00,z10,z20,z30,z40
y1,z01,z11,z21,z31,z41
y2,z02,z12,z22,z32,z42

I want to make a 3D Plot with LaTeX. Unfortunately, I was not able to read the data in this format. All examples I found have the format:

x,y,z
x0,y0,z00
x0,y1,z01
x0,y2,z02
x1,y0,z10
x1,y1,z11
x1,y2,z12

This format has redundant information in it and is, in my opinion, not suitable for large data-sets.

I need something like this:

 \begin{filecontents*}{data.csv}
    Value,0,1,2,3,4,5
    0,4,5,6,7,8,9
    1,3,4,5,6,7,8
    2,2,3,4,5,6,7
    3,1,2,3,4,5,6
    4,0,1,2,3,4,5
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[border=10pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{tikz-3dplot}
\usepackage{csvsimple}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
    \begin{axis}
\addplot3[line width=1pt,solid,color=blue] %
table[x=row[0][1:],y=col[0][1:],z=[x+1,y+2],col sep=semicolon]{data.csv};
\end{axis}

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Welcome to TeX.SX! This is a very common question/feature request as you can see in the PGFPlots tracker. There you will also find a link to an answer of crateane which might work here too if you should use LuaLaTeX. — Stefan Pinnow, Feb 23 '22 at 05:07
I do agree with @sunrein ("this format has redundant information in it and is not suitable for large data-sets"). It's a waste of time shaping a big matrix so it could be read by the pgfplots package — JJ Henry, May 09 '23 at 15:02

hpekristiansen · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-24T08:50:28.827

Gnuplot must be installed and it must be compiled with shell escape.

\begin{filecontents*}{data.csv}
    Value,0,1,2,3,5,6
    0,4,6,6,5,8,9
    1,3,4,5,6,7,8
    2,2,3,8,5,6,7
    3,1,2,3,4,3,6
    5,0,1,4,3,4,5
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[tikz, border=1cm]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.18}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[view={10}{40}]
\addplot3[surf] gnuplot[raw gnuplot] {set datafile separator comma; splot "data.csv" nonuniform matrix};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Edit: Here the same plot are again with one x-value changed to emphasize the non uniformity:

\begin{filecontents*}[overwrite]{data.csv}
Value,0,1,2,3,5,60
0,4,6,6,5,8,9
1,3,4,5,6,7,8
2,2,3,8,5,6,7
3,1,2,3,4,3,6
5,0,1,4,3,4,5
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[tikz, border=1cm]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.18}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[view={10}{40}]
\addplot3[surf] gnuplot[raw gnuplot] {set datafile separator comma; splot "data.csv" nonuniform matrix};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

With matrix columnheaders rowheader the plot will be wrong (not have the data format given by OP).

Thanks for the answer. I was able to build it with your help. But I needed to replace nonuniform matrix with matrix columnheaders rowheaders. In the documentation of gnuplot I found that on the csv the very first value (0,0) needs to be N+1. Since we have Text here, I get an error. — sunrein, Feb 24 '22 at 08:23
The above code compiles fine for me. You were asking about a nonuniform matrix (even though your sample data are uniform). If you change nonuniform matrix to matrix columnheaders rowheaders in my code with my sample data, the plot will be wrong. — hpekristiansen, Feb 24 '22 at 08:36

LaTeX 3D Plot from csv

1 Answers1