Graphics

Setting Line and Text Characteristics

If you transfer your figures to Word or PowerPoint applications, you can set line and text characteristics to values recommended for those applications. The Figure Copy Template Preferences dialog box provides Word and PowerPoint options to make these settings, or you can set certain line and text characteristics individually.

You can change line and text characteristics:

• Using the Graphical User Interface
• Using MATLAB Commands

Using the Graphical User Interface

To open Figure Copy Template Preferences, select Preferences from the figure window's File menu, and then click on Figure Copy Template in the left pane.

Settings you can change in the Figure Copy Template Preferences dialog box are as follows:

Word or PowerPoint.   Click Word or PowerPoint to apply settings recommended for MATLAB.

Text.   Use options in the Text panel to modify the appearance of all text in the figure. You can change the font size, change color text to black and white, and change the font style to bold.

Lines.   Use the Lines panel to modify the appearance of all lines in the figure. Options include

• Custom width -- Change the line width.
• Change style (Black or white) -- Change colored lines to black or white.
• Change style (B&W styles) -- Change solid lines to different line styles (e.g., solid, dashed, etc.), and black or white color.

UIControls and axes.   If your figure includes user interface controls, you can choose to show or hide them by clicking on Show uicontrols. Also, to keep axes limits and ticks as they appear on the screen, click Keep axes limits and tick spacing. To allow MATLAB to scale axes limits and ticks based on the size of the printed figure, clear this box.

Note    Changes you make using Page Setup affect the printed output only. They do not alter the figure displayed on your screen.

Using MATLAB Commands

You can use the set function on selected graphics objects in your figure to change individual line and text characteristics.

For example, to change line width to 1.8 and line style to a dashed line, use

• lineobj = findobj('type', 'line');
  set(lineobj, 'linewidth', 1.8);
  set(lineobj, 'linestyle', '--');
  

To change the font size to 15 points and font weight to bold, use

• textobj = findobj('type', 'text');
  set(textobj, 'fontunits', 'points');
  set(textobj, 'fontsize', 15);
  set(textobj, 'fontweight', 'bold');
  

Setting the Background Color

Setting the Line and Text Color