Graphics

Examples -- Setting Default LineStyles

The plot function cycles through the colors defined by the axes ColorOrder property when displaying multiline plots. If you define more than one value for the axes LineStyleOrder property, MATLAB increments the linestyle after each cycle through the colors.

You can set default property values that cause the plot function to produce graphs using varying linestyles, but not varying colors. This is useful when working on a monochrome display or printing on a black and white printer.

First Example

This example creates a figure with a white plot (axes) background color, then sets default values for axes objects on the root level.

• whitebg('w') %create a figure with a white color scheme
  set(0,'DefaultAxesColorOrder',[0 0 0],...
        'DefaultAxesLineStyleOrder','-|--|:|-.')
  

Whenever you call plot,

• Z = peaks; plot(1:49,Z(4:7,:))
  

it uses one color for all data plotted because the axes ColorOrder contains only one color, but cycles through the linestyles defined for LineStyleOrder.

Second Example

This example sets default values on more than one level in the hierarchy. These statements create two axes in one figure window, setting default values on the figure level and the axes level.

• t = 0:pi/20:2*pi;
  s = sin(t);
  c = cos(t);
  % Set default value for axes Color property
  figh = figure('Position',[30 100 800 350],...
                'DefaultAxesColor',[.8 .8 .8]); 
  
  axh1 = subplot(1,2,1); grid on
  % Set default value for line LineStyle property in first axes
  set(axh1,'DefaultLineLineStyle','-.')
  line('XData',t,'YData',s) 
  line('XData',t,'YData',c) 
  text('Position',[3 .4],'String','Sine')
  text('Position',[2 -.3],'String','Cosine',...
       'HorizontalAlignment','right')
  
  axh2 = subplot(1,2,2); grid on
  % Set default value for text Rotation property in second axes
  set(axh2,'DefaultTextRotation',90)
  line('XData',t,'YData',s) 
  line('XData',t,'YData',c) 
  text('Position',[3 .4],'String','Sine')
  text('Position',[2 -.3],'String','Cosine',...
       'HorizontalAlignment','right') 
  

Issuing the same line and text statements to each subplot region results in a different display, reflecting different default settings.

Since the default axes Color property is set on the figure level of the hierarchy, MATLAB creates both axes with the specified gray background color.

The axes on the left (subplot region 121) defines a dash-dot line style (-.) as the default, so each call to the line function uses dash-dot lines. The axes on the right does not define a default linestyle so MATLAB uses solid lines (the factory setting for lines).

The axes on the right defines a default text Rotation of 90 degrees, which rotates all text by this amount. MATLAB obtains all other property values from their factory settings, which results in nonrotated text on the left.

To install default values whenever you run MATLAB, specify them in your startup.m file. Note that MATLAB may install default values for some appearance properties when started by calling the colordef command.

Defining Default Values

Accessing Object Handles