Graphics

Optimizing Graphics Performance

This section discusses techniques that can help increase the speed with which MATLAB creates graphs. These techniques generally apply to cases where you are creating many graphs of similar data and can therefore improve rendering speed by preventing MATLAB from performing unnecessary operation.

Whether a given technique improves performance depends on the particular application. The profile function can help you determine where your code is consuming the most time.

General Performance Guidelines

The following list provides some general guidelines for optimizing performance:

• Set automatic-mode properties to manual whenever possible to prevent MATLAB from performing unnecessary operations.
• Modify existing objects instead of creating new ones.
• Use low-level core objects when creating objects repeatedly.
• Do not recreate legends or other annotations in a program loop; add these after you finish modifying the graph.
• Set the text Interpreter property to none if you are not using T_eX characters.
• Try various renderers and erase modes. MATLAB might not have auto-selected the fastest renderer for your application.

The remainder of this section provides more details on these and other techniques.

See Disable Automatic Modes for information on optimizing the use of axes objects.

See Changing Graph Data Rapidly for an example of techniques for interactive plotting.

See Performance of Bit-Mapped Images for information on optimizing the use of image objects.

See Performance of Patch Objects for information on optimizing the use of patch objects.

See Performance of Surface Objects for information on optimizing the use of surface objects.

Example -- Using Function Handles in GUIs

Disable Automatic Modes

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