Solving Problems in Dynamics and Vibrations Using MATLAB ...

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then the counter must be incremented such that, the flow of command does not enter the ‘if’
loop.
% Example to show the use of the hold command
counter = 0;
if (counter ==0)
hold;
end
counter = counter + 1;
Here the ‘hold’ command is executed only if the value of the counter is equal to zero. In this way
we can make sure that the plots are held. The drawback of this procedure is that we cannot toggle
the ‘hold’ to off.
Plotting Techniques
The plot function has different forms depending on the input arguments. For example, if y is a
vector, plot (y) produces a linear graph of the elements of y versus the index of the elements of y.
If you specify two vectors as arguments, plot (x,y) produces a graph of y versus x.
Whenever a plot is drawn, title’s and a label’s for the x axis and y axis are required. This is
achieved by using the following command.
To include a title for a plot use the following command
title (‘Title’)
For the x and y labels, use
xlabel(‘ label for the x-axis’)
ylabel(‘label for the y-axis’)
Always remember to plot the data with the grid lines. You can include the grid lines to your
current axes by including the following command in your code.
grid on
For more information about various other plotting techniques, type
help plot
in the command window.