How to ensure text on plot always in front?

Asked by Xiaohan Du on 29 Aug 2017

Latest activity Commented on by Xiaohan Du on 29 Aug 2017

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Hi all,

I plot some surfaces and label some points on the surface with it's value of z-axis, as shown on the figure. You can see that the black texts on figure 3-4 are all covered by the surfaces. How can I make sure that the black texts are always in front such that they can be seen?

Many thanks!

4 Comments

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Xiaohan Du on 29 Aug 2017

Does it work on 3d plot? I tried it and the text is still behind the surface, nothing changed. This is what I did:

b = text(locx, locy, locz, textToPlot, ...
    'color', '[0 0 0]', 'Fontsize', 12);
uistack(b, 'top')

José-Luis on 29 Aug 2017

A workaround would be to make your shape a bit transparent. Modify the Alpha property. Otherwise, you could try making your text an annotation.

José-Luis on 29 Aug 2017

Also, it might be a rendering issue. Have you tried saving to file and looking there.

Testing different renderers might also help.

1 Answer

Link

Answer by Teja Muppirala on 29 Aug 2017

Accepted Answer

One workaround would be to create an invisible axes on top, and then put the text in there.

figure
ax1 = axes;
mesh(ax1,peaks)
colorbar;
t(1) = text(25,25,1,'My text'); % The text will be obscured by the mesh
t(2) = text(10, 30,-2,'More text');
axHidden = axes('Visible','off','hittest','off'); % Invisible axes
linkprop([ax1 axHidden],{'CameraPosition' 'XLim' 'YLim' 'ZLim' 'Position'}); % The axes should stay aligned
set(t,'Parent',axHidden); % Put the text in the invisible Axes

2 Comments

Adam on 29 Aug 2017

The last 3 lines are very instructive for numerous similar purposes. I created a solution to one of my problems by adding a second invisible axes on top of my original, but I spent ages messing around with problems caused by zooming, panning, adding a colourbar etc.

This method still causes trouble if you mess about with colourbars on and off, but for zooming and panning it solves all those problems.

Xiaohan Du on 29 Aug 2017

Hi both,

This is quite complex compare with just making the surfaces transparent, I tried Jose's solution with modifying the Alpha property and it's like this:

I think it's much better.

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