# Revision history [back]

This is a long comment rather than an answer.

## Plotting in Sage can use two types of arguments

Many of Sage's plotting functions, including, plot, parametric_plot, implicit_plot, plot3d, parametric_plot3d, implicit_plot3d, can accept as arguments either symbolic expressions or callable functions.

### Symbolic expressions

If symbolic expressions are used, as in the question, Sage tries to convert them into "fast callable" functions.

The very long error traceback in the question shows the code path goes through a number of functions in sage/symbolic/expression_conversions.py, sage/symbolic/expression.pyx, sage/ext/fast_callable.pyx, sage/ext/fast_eval.pyx, as one might expect (although it's really long), and finally, quite unexpectedly I think, in sage/rings/number_field/number_field_element.pyx.

I don't fully understand the problem there, so I would not know how to get the desired plot using symbolic expressions.

### Callable functions

Using callable functions that are not symbolic expressions, as @FrédéricC suggests, no need to define the variables with var before plotting, or to recall their names in the ranges.

This could be done as follows:

sage: xyz = [lambda u, v: sqrt(u + I*v).real(), lambda u, v: sqrt(u + I*v).imag(), lambda u, v: v]
sage: parametric_plot3d(xyz, (-1, 1), (-1, 1))


or less condensed:

sage: xuv = lambda u, v: sqrt(u + I*v).real()
sage: yuv = lambda u, v: sqrt(u + I*v).imag()
sage: zuv = lambda u, v: v
sage: parametric_plot3d([xuv, yuv, zuv], (-1, 1), (-1, 1))


or with a different color and some transparency:

sage: parametric_plot3d([xuv, yuv, zuv], (-1, 1), (-1, 1), color='steelblue', opacity=0.5)