patchsc documentation
patchsc plots patch objects with face colors scaled by numeric values.
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Contents
Syntax
patchsc(x,y,z) patchsc(...,'colormap',cmap) patchsc(...,'caxis',ColorAxisLimits) patchsc(...,'PatchProperty',Value,...) h = patchsc(...)
Description
patchsc(x,y,z) plots cell arrays x,y color-scaled by the numeric values in z. Dimensions of z must match the dimensions of cell arrays x and y. x and y can contain multiple sections separated by NaNs.
patchsc(...,'colormap',cmap) specifies a colormap to which face colors will be mapped. If a colormap is not specified, your default colormap will be used.
patchsc(...,'caxis',ColorAxisLimits) sets color axis limits. This is different from other functions like imagesc or surf, which allow setting color limits after plotting. patchsc does not allow changing the color axis limits after plotting. Default limits are taken as [min(z) max(z)].
patchsc(...,'PatchProperty',Value,...) specifies any patch property.
h = patchsc(...) returns handles of all the patch objects. The data element corresponding to each patch object is included in the handle 'tag' property.
Examples
For this example, make a map of Latin American countries, color-scaled by their average elevation. Start by loading the data that the borders function uses to plot national outlines, and then trim the dataset down to include only Latin America:
load('borderdata.mat'); % Indices of Latin American countries: ind = [8 17 21 33 38 39 41 48 49 55 59 75 77 78 79 109 120 158,... 159 161 162 165 174 211 214 226 241 242]; % Trim the dataset to Latin America: lat = lat(ind); lon = lon(ind); z = z(ind);
Now let's take a look at the data we're plotting:
whos lat lon z
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes lat 28x1 355776 cell lon 28x1 355776 cell z 28x1 224 double
Note that lat and lon are cell arrays, each containing the outlines of a different country, whereas z is a numeric array that just contains one number--the average elevation--for each country. That's exactly how patchsc likes its data, so let's plot it up:
% Plot countries color-scaled by average elevation: patchsc(lon,lat,z) axis equal tight cb = colorbar; ylabel(cb,'national average elevation (m)')
In the plot above, the colorbar axis goes down to -220 m. That's because the national average elevation dataset was created from a coarse resolution grid, which interpolated across Guadeloupe to give it an average negative value. It would be great if we could fix it by simply typing
caxis([0 1500])
to reset the color axis limits, but unfortunately that won't work for patchsc objects, because they aren't dynamically tied to the colormap. So instead, we must plot it again, specifying the caxis limits when we call patchsc:
figure patchsc(lon,lat,z,'caxis',[0 1500]) axis equal tight cb = colorbar; ylabel(cb,'national average elevation (m)')
Do it again, this time specifying the cmocean amp colormap:
figure patchsc(lon,lat,z,'caxis',[0 1500],'colormap',cmocean('amp')) axis equal tight cb = colorbar; ylabel(cb,'national average elevation (m)')
You can also specify any patch property, including facealpha, linewidth, edgecolor, etc. So this time set the caxis limits, the colormap, the edge color, the edge linewidth, and the transparency:
figure patchsc(lon,lat,z,'caxis',[0 1500],'caxis',[2 24],... 'colormap',cmocean('amp'),... 'edgecolor','blue',... 'linewidth',3,... 'facealpha',0.5) axis equal tight cb = colorbar; ylabel(cb,'national average elevation (m)')
Author Info
This function and supporting documentation were written by Chad A. Greene of the University of Texas Institute for Geopyhsics (UTIG), May 2017. This function is part of the Climate Data Toolbox for Matlab.