How to disable and enable plot lines from the figure window?

I often have multiple lines in one axis  as I would like to compare them with each other. However, this decreases the readability of the graph when I want to focus on only some of the data.

How can I disable and enable plot lines from the figure window?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

There are two methods to achieve this:

Using the Plot Browser tool:

You can activate and deactivate the plot lines with the Plot Browser tool. To show the Plot Browser interface, please use the following command in your code:

plotbrowser('on')

You can also access the tool from the figure's menu bar by clicking "View -> Plot Browser".

Using the legend object:

Alternatively, it is possible to enable and disable plot lines using the figure's legend. It requires implementing a custom callback function in the "ItemHitFcn" property of the "legend" object. You can implement the functionality to enable and disable plot lines by following the steps below:

 

Step 1:

Open the default "ItemHitFcn" callback function by running the following command in the MATLAB Command Window:

>> edit defaultItemHitCallback

Step 2:

Editing the default MATLAB functions is not recommended. Therefore, copy the contents of the "defaultItemHitCallback.m" function into a new script and close  "defaultItemHitCallback.m" without saving any changes.

Step 3:

Edit the first line of the new script file to:

function myItemHitCallback(hSrc,eventData)

Step 4:

Add the following code at the bottom of the file before the last "end":

if strcmp(eventData.SelectionType, 'normal') && strcmp(eventData.Region, 'icon')
        eventData.Peer.Visible = ~eventData.Peer.Visible;
end

This code will switch the visibility of the relevant plot line when a line icon in the legend is clicked.

Step 5:

Save the new file in your MATLAB working directory as "myItemHitCallback.m".

Step 6:

When creating a legend for your plot, attach the new callback function by adding the following line:

legHandle = legend; %Example legend definition
legHandle.ItemHitFcn = @myItemHitCallback;

Step 7:

In the created figure, you should now be able to disable and enable the visibility of the plot line by clicking on the line icon in the legend.