Figure Tools :: Graphics (Getting Started)

Getting Started

Figure Tools

The figure is equipped with sets of tools that operate on graphs. The figure Tools menu provides access to many graph tools.

For More Information See MATLAB Plotting Tools in the MATLAB documentation or select Plotting Tools from the figure Help menu.

Access to Tools

You can access the figure toolbars and the plotting tools from the View menu, as shown in the following picture.

Figure Toolbars

Figure toolbars provide easy access to many graph modification features. There are three toolbars. When you place the cursor over a particular tool, a text box pops up with the tool name. The following picture shows the three toolbars displayed with the cursor over the Data Cursor tool.

For More Information See Figure Toolbars in the MATLAB documentation.

Plotting Tools

Plotting tools are attached to figures and create an environment for creating graphs. These tools enable you to do the following:

Select from a wide variety of graph types
Set the properties of graphics objects
Annotate graphs with text, arrows, etc.
Create and arrange subplots in the figure
Drag and drop data into graphs

Display the plotting tools from the View menu or by clicking in the figure toolbar, as shown in the following picture.

There are three components to the plotting tools:

Figure Palette -- Specify and arrange subplots, access workspace variables for plotting or editing, and add annotations.
Plot Browser -- Select objects in the graphics hierarchy, control visibility, and add data to axes.
Property Editor -- Change key properties of the selected object. Click Inspector for access to all object properties.

The following picture shows a figure with the plotting tools enabled.

Plotting Tools and MATLAB Commands

You can enable the plotting tools on any graph, even if you created it using MATLAB commands. For example, suppose you create the following graph:

t = 0:pi/20:2*pi;
y = exp(sin(t));
plotyy(t,y,t,y,'plot','stem')
xlabel('X Axis')
ylabel('Plot Y Axis')
title('Two Y Axes')

This graph contains two y-axes, one for each plot type (lineseries and stem graphs). The plotting tools make it easy to select any of the objects that the graph contains and set their properties.

For example, adding a label for the y-axis that corresponds to the stem plot is easily accomplished by selecting that axes in the Plot Browser and setting the YLabel property in the Property Editor.

Graph Components Arranging Graphs Within a Figure