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Selecting a Renderer

A renderer is software and/or hardware that processes graphics data (such as vertex coordinates) to display, print, or export a figure. You can change the renderer that MATLAB uses when printing a figure:

Renderers Supported by MATLAB

MATLAB supports three rendering methods with the following characteristics:

Painter's

Z-buffer

OpenGL

For more detailed information about the rendering methods, see Renderer on the Figure Properties reference page.

The Default Renderer for MATLAB

By default, MATLAB automatically selects the best rendering method, based on the attributes of the figure (its complexity and the settings of various Handle Graphics properties) and in some cases, the printer driver or file format used.

In general, MATLAB uses

The RendererMode property tells MATLAB whether to automatically select the renderer based on the contents of the figure (when set to auto), or to use the Renderer property that you have indicated (when set to manual).

Reasons for Manually Setting the Renderer

Two reasons to set the renderer yourself are

Using the Graphical User Interface

  1. Open the Page Setup dialog box by selecting Page Setup from the figure window's File menu. Select the Axes and Figure tab.
  2. Under Figure renderer, select the desired rendering method from the list box.
  3. Click OK.

Using MATLAB Commands

You can use the Renderer property or a switch with the print function to set the renderer for printing or exporting. These two lines each set the renderer for the current figure to Z-buffer.

or

The first example saves the new value of Renderer with the figure; the second example only affects the current print or export operation.

Note that when you set the Renderer property, the RendererMode property is automatically reset from auto (the factory default) to manual.


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