Subplot after opening a saved figure

Hi, I have a collection of figures, each one consisting of 20 subplots (4x5). I want to open each subplot in turn and draw a couple of lines over the existing data. But as soon as I enter "subplot(4,5,1)," MATLAB deletes the top-left plot instead of selecting it. "hold on" has no effect on this behavior. Is there some other command that can help me select my data without deleting it?

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

Or, if your previous figure is saved in a .fig file.

h=open('test.fig');
handles=findobj(h,'Type','axes');

You'll get the handles for those sub-plots. Then

axes(handles(1));
hold on;
plot(NewData);

Answer 2

[Paulo Silva]

When you create a subplot get the handle for it like this h=subplot(...

When you want to have one subplot as current axes do axes(h)

Example

figure
for n=1:5
h(n)=subplot(5,1,n);
end
axes(h(2))
spy
pause(1)
axes(h(5))
spy

[Dustin]

Thanks!

[Fangjun Jiang]

@Paulo, Hah! That is how you propaganda your picture!

[Paulo Silva]

Yes it is, I use the spy for many tests, love that 3 letters function :)

[Fangjun Jiang]

You need to add "hold on" after selecting axes.