mathworks / physvis

Visualize physics with simple graphics commands using MATLAB

PHYSVIS Toolbox

Description

Students use PHYSVIS to gain a deeper understanding of physics as they iteratively apply the fundamental laws of physics to compute and visualize a system's evolution. PHYSVIS lets students explore physical systems visually without having to write explicit graphics statements. PHYSVIS is built with the matrix-based MATLAB language so students can express computational mathematics in a natural way, which helps them translate theoretical models into code.

Install

To install, run the PHYSVIS.mltbx file in MATLAB.

The following C files have been compiled for MATLAB R2017a on the most common platforms:

• /resources/arbitraryRotation.c
• /resources/arbitraryRotation_ThetaAxis.c
• /resources/transformMultiply.c

The common platforms include:

• Windows 7 and 10
• Debian 7.4 and 8.3
• OSX 10.10.5, 10.11.3, and 10.11.6

To install PHYSVIS on older versions of MATLAB on these common platforms, see the section titled "Build from Source". That section also explains how to install PHYSVIS on less common platforms.

Documentation

To view documentation after installing, search for 'physvis' in the search bar at the top right of the MATLAB desktop.

Contributing

PHYSVIS was designed to make it easy for others to add new classes of shapes / geometries. The Box and Sphere classes serve as examples.

A class diagram is included in the /design-documents directory.

Custom error messages can be added to / referenced from the XML file /resources/messages.xml

Build from Source

To build PHYSVIS from source and install it,

1. Copy / paste mex files from /resources/<MATLAB_Release> to /resources/
2. Be sure to add the following directories to your path:
   • /+physvis
   • /doc/* (all subdirectories)
   • /resources (no subdirectories)
3. Run the PHYSVIS.prj file in MATLAB and package the toolbox
4. Run PHYSVIS.mltbx

Sometimes specific MATLAB versions and/or specific operating systems require that you (re)compile the C files in /resources into mex files. The following MATLAB documentation pages describe the compilation procedure:

• Mex documentation
• List of compatible compilers
• How to change the default compiler

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