Delete axis, keep legend

I need to have a subplot with an empty axis, but with a legend. My workaround to put a title on an empty subplot was:

    if isempty(data) % Failsafe for empty section
        pie(1); % Plots any pie chart
        title(data_title);
        cla; % Clears axis
    end

But it does not work for the legend, it vanishes with it.

How can I deal with it?

[Alexandre Cucatti dos Santos]

So, I have this figure with 6 subplots. The legend for the 3 upper and the 3 lower are the same, so it appears only in the rightmost subplots. However, sometimes the rightmost plot can be like the upper left for this sample (an empty plot created with cla()). I need to make it so that the legend appears with all 3 entries even for cases like this.

For reasons of confidenciality, the titles and legend entries must be censored

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

To create a legend without any visible data using plot().

plot(nan, 'r-', 'DisplayName', 'MyLegendName'); 
legend(); 

Note: cla() will still clear the legend but you won't need to call cla() because nothing is plotted.

To create a legend without any visible data using pie()

% Create a dummy pie chart and its legend
h = pie([1,1,1]); 
lh = legend('a','b','c')

% Delete non-patch objects
hPatch = h(strcmp(get(h,'type'),'patch')); 
hNotPatch = h(~strcmp(get(h,'type'),'patch')); 
delete(hNotPatch)
% Remove Faces of patches
set(hPatch,'Faces', NaN)

[Alexandre Cucatti dos Santos]

Hey, Adam!

I tried your suggestion, but it does not work exactly as I need, I believe the command has to be necessarily pie(), and that it should plot something with exaclty 3 sectors.

Please refer to my comment on the question, I believe it clarifies what I'm after :)

[Adam Danz]

I updated my answer to show how this is done with pie charts.

First you must create a pie chart and its legend. Then you must remove the text and then remove the faces of each patch by replacing their values with NaN. That makes the entire pie chart go away and retains the legend.

[sofia fellini]

Thank you @Adam Danz !! I was looking for this today!