Graphics |
Defining the Color of Lines for Plotting
The axes ColorOrder
property determines the color of the individual lines drawn by the plot
and plot3
functions. For multiline graphs, these functions cycle through the colors defined by ColorOrder
, repeating the cycle when they reach the end of the list.
The colordef
command defines various color order schemes for different background colors. colordef
is typically called in the matlabrc
file, which is executed during MATLAB startup.
Defining Your Own ColorOrder
You can redefine ColorOrder
to be any m-by-3 matrix of RGB values, where m is the number of colors. However, high-level functions like plot
and plot3
reset most axes properties (including ColorOrder
) to the defaults each time you call them. To use your own ColorOrder
definition you must do one of the following three things:
ColorOrder
on the figure or root level
NextPlot
property to add
or replacechildren
line
function, which obeys the ColorOrder
but does not clear the axes or reset properties
Changing the Default ColorOrder. You can define a new ColorOrder
that MATLAB uses within a particular figure, for all axes within any figures created during the MATLAB session, or as a user-defined default that MATLAB always uses.
To change the ColorOrder
for all plots in the current figure, set a default in that figure. For example, to set ColorOrder
to the colors red, green, and blue, use the statement
To define a new ColorOrder
that MATLAB uses for all plotting during your entire MATLAB session, set a default on the root level so axes created in any figure use your defaults.
To define a new ColorOrder
that MATLAB always uses, place the previous statement in your startup.m
file.
Setting the NextPlot Property. The axes NextPlot
property determines how high-level graphics functions draw into an existing axes. You can use this property to prevent plot
and plot3
from resetting the ColorOrder
property each time you call them, but still clear the axes of any existing plots.
By default, NextPlot
is set to replace
, which is equivalent to a cla reset
command (i.e., delete all axes children and reset all properties, except Position
, to their defaults). If you set NextPlot
to replacechildren
,
MATLAB deletes the axes children, but does not reset axes properties. This is equivalent to a cla
command without the reset
.
After setting NextPlot
to replacechildren
, you can redefine the ColorOrder
property and call plot
and plot3
without affecting the ColorOrder
.
Setting NextPlot
to add
is the equivalent of issuing the hold
on
command. This setting prevents MATLAB from resetting the ColorOrder
property, but it does not clear the axes children with each call to a plotting function.
Using the line Function. The behavior of the line
function depends on its calling syntax. When you use the informal form (which does not include any explicit property definitions),
line
obeys the ColorOrder
property, but does not clear the axes with each invocation or change the view to 3-D (as plot3
does). However, line
can be useful for creating your own plotting functions where you do not want the automatic behavior of plot
or plot3
, but you do want multiline graphs to use a particular ColorOrder
.
Example -- Simulating Multiple Colormaps in a Figure | Line Styles Used for Plotting -- LineStyleOrder |
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