How to edit a surf graph?

I currently have the code

for n=1:N
  surf(P_overtime(:,:,n));
  axis tight
  colormap
  colorbar
  drawnow
  pause(.2)
end

The y- axis changes after P-overtime drops below certain values. How do set the limits of my y axis from 8000 to 3000. Also, how can I have colors coordinating to certain values as the number decrease?

Answer 1

[Chad Greene]

I'm not sure why colormap is in there--you can remove that line.

Set the y axis limits like this:

ylim([3000 8000])

Set the color axis limits in a similar way to make sure the colors change with the data like this:

caxis([150 575])

where I've used 150 and 575 as some arbitrary low and high values.

Try to do as little as possible inside the loop, because every time you call something in a loop, it eats up computational time. I suggest this rewrite:

h = surf(P_overtime(:,:,1));
axis tight
colorbar
ylim([3000 8000]) 
caxis([150 575])

for n = 2:N; 
   set(h,'cdata',P_overtime(:,:,n),'zdata',P_overtime(:,:,n))
   drawnow
   pause(.2)
end

[Walter Roberson]

You do not need both drawnow() and pause(): pause() automatically flushes the buffer.

[Chad Greene]

Oh, good to know!