Setup Default Property at startup

Dear all,

I regularly change the default values for graphical properties in my startup.m file like

set(0,'DefaultAxesFontName','times');

to set all axes fonts to times.

Recently after updating to R2015a I have an issue when creating pdf/ps file of my figures where the grid lines are hardly visible. I figured out a trick to see them is to set GridAlpha to 1 and GridColor to [0.1 0.1 0.1] as set(gca,'GridLineStyle',':','GridAlpha',1,'GridColor',[0.1 0.1 0.1])

Now I tried to put the following statements in my startup.m file

set(0,'DefaultGridAlpha',1); set(0,'DefaultGridColor',[0.1 0.1 0.1]);

but I get the following error message

Warning: Executing startup failed in matlabrc. This indicates a potentially serious problem in your MATLAB setup, which should be resolved as soon as possible. Error detected was: MATLAB:hgutils:InvalidClassName gridalpha is an invalid class name

My question is how to change the default value of these properties?

Thank you for your help

Answer 1

[Cindy Solomon]

Hi Patrick,

To define a default property value, you need to specify a string with the word 'default', the object type (ex: Axes), and the property name (ex: Grid Alpha). For example, in order to set the properties you mentioned, you would do:

set(groot,'DefaultAxesGridAlpha',1);
set(groot,'DefaultAxesGridColor',[0.1 0.1 0.1]);

As of R2014b, MathWorks released a new graphics system wherein graphics handles are now objects instead of doubles. In doing so, you can more easily define properties of a particular level. In addition, the "root object" is now called "groot" (graphics root), although you should still be able to use 0 to set default values. For more information on setting default values, I recommend looking at this page.

Hope this helps!