| Release 11 New Features |
Mapping Toolbox
The Mapping Toolbox was introduced with MATLAB 5.2, providing a toolbox for geographic display and cartographic analysis. The toolbox gives you the ability to plot geographically based information as easily as any other type of data that you can plot in MATLAB. Both vector and matrix map data can be displayed, manipulated, and analyzed. The toolbox manages the projection, clipping, and trimming of the data automatically for you, even if you change the projection. The Mapping Toolbox provides more than 60 map projections. There are extensive geographic analysis functions, such as computations of distance, tracks, great and small circles, intersections, and navigation functions. These computations can be made for a spherical body or can make use of spheroidal models of the earth and other planets when more accuracy is required. Utility functions allow you to convert easily among different time, distance, and angle units. The toolbox provides a number of global map data sets and allows you to import detailed data from government sources over the Internet and on CD-ROM. These data sets include the Digital Chart of the World, Tiger/Line files, and Digital Elevation Models of the world and the United States. In addition to the command-line functions, the toolbox also provides an extensive suite of GUIs for accessing the toolbox functionality. These GUIs allow you to manage data interactively, plot it, modify the display, make measurements, and generate geographic data like tracks and circles. The GUIs are available as an integrated set and also are available individually.