Adding Contour Lines

The following commands relate to contour lines in 3D plots:

set contour base - Draw the contour lines along the base of the diagram
set contour surface - Draws the lines along the 3D surface
set contour both - Draws lines on both surface and base
set nocontour - Turns off contour lines

Note that the set contour surface option is not available with the set hidden3d option. Typing the following commands yields the following two graphs:

set hidden3d
set contour base
splot [-2:2] [-2:2] 2*(x**2 + y**2)*exp(-x**2 - y**2)

set nohidden3d
set contour surface
replot

If only the contours lines are desired, the set nosurface command will turn off drawing the surface. For more information on this, type help set surface. The drawing of contour lines is highly custimizable, for information type help set cntrparam.

For example, if you only want the contour lines for z=.2, .4, .6, you could enter the following:

set cntrparam levels discrete .2, .4, .6

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