How to create a grid of evenly spaced ones in a matrix of zeros?

So essentially I want a grid looking something like this:

0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 0 1 0
0 0 0 0 0 0

or something similar, with flexibility in the number of ones and how they're distributed, and the size of the matrix.

This is what I currently have:

u = 1:500; % size of matrix
v = u;
[u, v] = meshgrid(u, v);

N_points = 5; %number of points in each axis

point_array = zeros(size(u));

pos_x = round(size(u,1)/2) + separation_x * (-(N_points-1)/2:(N_points-1)/2); % positioning of points
pos_y = round(size(u,2)/2) + separation_y * (-(N_points-1)/2:(N_points-1)/2);

[pos_x,pos_y] = meshgrid(pos_x,pos_y);

point_array(sub2ind(size(point_array),pos_x,pos_y)) = 1; % converts x/y coordinates of chosen points into index of corresponding point in matrix, sets equal to 1.

Is there a more compact or straightforward way to achieve this?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

"Is there a more compact or straightforward way to achieve this?"

Definitively!

%demo data
size_array = 500;
npoints = 15;

point_array = zeros(size_array);    %create array full of zeros
locations = linspace(0, size_array, npoints+1);  %calculate location with one more point to get the spacing right
locations = round(locations(2:end) - locations(2)/2);  %then remove first point (0) and offset by half the distance to 2nd point
point_array(locations, locations) = 1;  %and set these locations to 1

%for visualisation
imagesc(point_array); axis('square'); colormap(gray)

[Alexander Collins]

Thanks, this works. Although the method I orignally posted generates the points relative to the centre, with a constant offset, and so keeps the grid symmetric with respect to the matrix.