Where to format plot?

I have a script (Matlab R2015b)

    ...
    BLOCK1
    ...
    for i = 0:100
      ...
      figure(1)
      ax = gca;
      ax.XTick = (0, 1, 3);
      ax.XTickLabel = {'one', 'two', 'three'};
      plot(x, y);
      ...
    end
    ...
    BLOCK2
    ...

I would like to move the plot formatting (lines beginning with ax.) away from the for loop to BLOCK1 or BLOCK2, in order to reserve the for loop only for the actual calculations.

Unfortunately when I move formatting to BLOCK1 all formatting effects disappear or if I move formatting to BLOCK2 the program gets stuck.

By analogy if I created another for loop where I filled the same plot I would have to do the formatting again.

In short, how to format the plot at the beginning of the script and make that formatting stick.

Answer 1

[Nick Counts]

look at the axis property

ax.NextPlot.

During axes creation, I believe this is set to 'replace' by default. When some of the higher level plotting functions are called (plot, scatter, and other's I'm sure) they trigger an axes reset

ax.reset

You should be able to avoid this by using

hold on

Alternatively, you could try to set the ax.NextPlot to a value like 'add' (see the documentation,) but the hold function is handling that for you under the hood, so in my opinion it's a little easier/clearer

Without seeing your code, it's impossible to tell why it's getting stuck when you move the formatting to BLOCK2

The following code works for me, with formatting both before and after the plot loop:

Example 1:

    hfig = figure(1)
    ax = gca;
    ax.XTick = [1, 2, 3]
    ax.XTickLabel = {'one', 'two', 'three'};
    hold on

    for i = 0:100

          plot( [1:3], randi(100, 1, 3) );

    end

Example 2:

    hfig = figure(1)
    ax = gca;
    hold on

    for i = 0:100

          plot( [1:3], randi(100, 1, 3) );

    end

    ax.XTick = [1, 2, 3]
    ax.XTickLabel = {'one', 'two', 'three'};

[Viesturs Veckalns]

Using hold on fixes the problem in case of plot, but if I use semilogy instead, I lose the logarithmic scale for the y axis.

[Viesturs Veckalns]

I discovered I can write ax.YScale = 'log'; and use plot instead of semilogy.