How can I preserve the figure information?

I've always worked with vector graphics in Matlab, just setting the figure copy option to preserve information. However, now I'm trying to copy a surface plotted using a vector with 2049x2049 points and the figure is losing its resolution. I wanna export this figure to the software Visio, so I can put it togheter with another figure which shows the countours generated by the intersection of the surface and the horizontal plane. Any idea why this figure isn't preserving its information? I appreciate any help!

figure
surf(P,'FaceColor','w')
hold on
surf(xlim, ylim, plane_z1*ones(2), 'FaceColor','#A2142F', 'FaceAlpha',1)
hold off
xlabel('X \rightarrow', 'Rotation',20)
ylabel('\leftarrow Y', 'Rotation',-25)
zlabel('Z \rightarrow')

Answer 1

[Dave B]

How about exporting to a file and importing that file in visio?

Depending on what format visio likes best (I suspect svg), and what release of MATLAB you're on (exportgraphics came out in R2020a):

print(gcf, 'bugsurf.svg', '-dsvg')

or

exportgraphics(gca, 'bigsurf.eps')

[Eric Bernard Dilger]

Hello @Dave B, thanks for your help! I tried both ways and the figure is still losing resolution. Do you know if the large amout of points (2049x2049) could be imposing this resolution limitation?

[Dave B]

I see the issue: it looks like MATLAB switches over to rendering this as a bitmap because it's so large. You can force it to render using vector graphics with 'ContentType', 'vector' but that makes things really slow (slow like unresponsive).

With surf(randn(250)) it was pretty slow, at surf(randn(500)) it took a good 5 minutes on my system before the file was finished (and the file was 250mb, which is big for a vector graphics file). I'd imagine 2000x2000 would be too slow/big to be useful.

You could try exporting it as a high resolution bitmap, does that still fall short of you resolution requirement?

exportgraphics(gca, 'foo2.png', 'Resolution', 1000)

(print version of this is '-r1000')

[Eric Bernard Dilger]

Hello @Dave B!

Thanks for your help! It wasn't even preserving the axes resolution before. But now, your last suggestion solved my problem. Thank you very much!

[Dave B]

Happy to help, sorry it took a few tries: 2049 seemed like such a harmless number, even 2049^2 squared, but in vector graphics I guess that's a lot of paths!