How can I display data with large absolute range in a 3D surface plot?

I've been trying to create a surface plot of data collected from a surface depth recording and am having trouble figuring out how to scale my Z data so it can fit on the plot. Not sure how to link the exact data (comes from an hd5 .datx file), but relevant info below:

• The max range of my Z data is 1.7977e+308
• x and y dimensions are a 1024 x 1024 meshgrid

[X, Y] = meshgrid(1:1024, 1:1024)

• Attempting to run

surf(X, Y, Z)

• I get a "Limits are too large" error

Any advice on what would be the best way to scale my Z data in order to dsipaly it on the surface plot? Thanks!

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

If all your Z data are greater than zero, taking the natural or base-10 logarithm could be an option, unless some other transformation is appropriate.

[Bryan Cannon]

Mm I think I'd have to adjust the negative values I have. There seems to be an issue with the data conversion itself so I may need to figure out how to extract and convert the z data to a usable data type first. Appreciate the help!

[Star Strider]

My pleasure!

One option is to simply divide them by a constant, perhaps 1E+100.

Another is to use a modified version of the tanh function to scale the amplitudes:

x = linspace(-1E+300, 1E+300, 10);
y = 1E+100*tanh(x/1E+300);

figure
plot(x, y)